Flight log / Transmission 047

Sitelink assets: the free real estate most B2B ads waste

Sitelinks are the hidden block in World 1-1: free, right in front of you, and most players walk past. Google lets a search ad show up to 6 of them on desktop and 8 on mobile, and you won't pay for more than 2 clicks per impression.

Sitelinks are the extra links that can appear under a search ad: "Pricing," "Customer stories," "Book a demo." On a B2B ad they're the cheapest way to answer the second question a searcher has before they click. Most accounts fill them once at launch with whatever was in the site nav, then never look again.

This guide covers the current specs, which sitelinks earn their space in B2B, where to add them, what Google's automated sitelinks do, how to read the reporting, and where the numbers can mislead you.

What are sitelink assets?

Sitelink assets are additional links shown with your ad that send people to specific pages on your site, each with its own text, optional description lines and final URL. If you learned Google Ads before late 2022 you know them as sitelink extensions. Google rebranded ad extensions as "assets" in the Google Ads interface in September 2022, as Search Engine Land reported at the time; the feature itself carried over, including associations at the account, campaign and ad group levels.

The important word in Google's documentation is "can." Google's About assets page is explicit that adding an approved asset doesn't guarantee it will show with your ad every time. Assets need a minimum Ad Rank, and Google generally shows the combination of eligible assets it predicts will perform best in that auction. Ads in higher positions get the first opportunity to show more of them.

What are the sitelink character limits and rules?

Here's the spec sheet as of October 2026, from Google Ads Help's sitelink page unless noted.

Two lines in that table carry most of the strategy. First, 25 characters is short: "Customer stories" fits, "See how teams like yours use us" doesn't. Second, the description lines are optional but recommended. Google's guidance asks for 6 sitelinks with descriptions, and on its sitelink page Google reports, from its own data for May 2025, that advertisers who increased sitelinks per campaign to 6 saw on average up to 3.5% more conversions at a similar cost per conversion. That's Google grading its own feature, so treat it as direction, not a forecast for your account.

Do sitelinks increase click-through rate?

Usually, and Google's About assets page says assets often increase your total number of clicks. But the comparison most people make to prove it is rigged in sitelinks' favor. Here's what that comparison looks like in a hypothetical B2B account: CTR on impressions where sitelinks showed, versus impressions where they didn't.

In this illustrative account, impressions with sitelinks run near 7% CTR against roughly 4% without, and the gap widens after week 5, when generic nav links were swapped for pricing, proof and demo links. Tempting to call that a 75% lift. Don't. Sitelinks show more often when the ad ranks higher, and higher positions get more clicks anyway, so part of that gap is position, not sitelinks. Google's own docs say a combination of assets won't give you more expected CTR than a higher position would.

The useful signal in the chart is the step change at the marker. Same campaign, same bids, different sitelink copy, and the with-sitelinks line moves while the without line stays flat. That's the comparison worth making: your sitelinks against your old sitelinks.

Which sitelinks should a B2B search ad use?

Pick links that answer the questions a buyer has before they'll fill a form. In most B2B accounts that's four things: what it costs, who else uses it, whether it works with their stack, and what happens if they ask for a demo. The pattern that shows up in most B2B accounts is that those links get clicked, and company links don't. Here's an illustrative split of sitelink clicks in a hypothetical SaaS campaign.

In this hypothetical campaign, pricing alone takes 29% of sitelink clicks and the top three (pricing, customer stories, demo) take 63%. Blog and careers together take 8%, which is space that could be holding a link someone in a buying cycle actually wants. A job seeker clicking "Careers" from a paid non-brand ad is a click you paid for that was never going to convert.

A short list of sitelinks that tend to earn their place on B2B ads:

• Pricing or plans. Even "Pricing: talk to sales" beats hiding it. If pricing is custom, link a page that explains how it's built.
• Proof. Customer stories, ideally filtered to the industry the ad group targets.
• The next step. A demo, trial or assessment page, written as the outcome: "Book a 20-min demo."
• Fit questions. Integrations, security and compliance, or "For finance teams" style segment pages.
• A comparison or how-it-works page for searchers still deciding between approaches.

And the usual waste: Home, About us, Careers, Blog, Contact us (when the ad already goes to a contact form), and two sitelinks that land on the same page. A near-duplicate takes a slot that a different question could have used.

Do sitelink clicks convert as well as headline clicks?

Not necessarily, and that's the point of checking. A sitelink sends the click to a different page than your ad's final URL, so each one has its own conversion rate. The chart below continues the hypothetical example.

In this illustrative case the demo sitelink converts at 9.6%, three times the headline click, because anyone who clicks "Book a demo" has already decided. Pricing converts above the headline too. The blog link converts at 0.6%. Click share and conversion rate tell different stories, so look at both before you cut or keep a sitelink. If the pages behind your best sitelinks don't have a clear next step, that's a landing page job; see our call to action examples for the button side of it.

Sitelinks are also a message match problem. Each one makes a promise in 25 characters, and the page has to keep it. A "See pricing" sitelink that lands on a page with no prices is the same broken promise as a mismatched headline, at a smaller scale. The message match guide covers the full chain.

Should you add sitelinks at the account, campaign or ad group level?

All three, in layers. Google lets you add sitelinks at the account, campaign, asset group or ad group level. Search Ads 360 Help notes that by default an ad group uses the sitelinks of its account or campaign, and if you don't want an account-level sitelink to appear in a campaign or ad group, the documented route is to remove it from the account and add the sitelinks you prefer at the campaign or ad group level instead.

• Account level: a safe set of at least 4 (Google's setup tip) that would make sense on any ad: pricing, customer stories, demo, security.
• Campaign level: links that fit the theme. A competitor campaign gets a comparison page; a brand campaign gets login and support.
• Ad group level: your highest-volume ad groups get their own 6 with descriptions, pointing at the most specific pages you have for that intent.

The ad group layer is where B2B accounts leave the most on the table. An ad group for "SOC 2 compliance software" and one for "vendor risk management" share an account-level "Integrations" link when each could have a sitelink to its own use-case page.

What are dynamic (automated) sitelinks?

Google can also show dynamic sitelinks it creates itself, with no setup required. Per Google Ads Help, they can come from sources including your landing pages, use the same format as manual sitelinks, and "may show alongside or instead of" the ones you created. You're not charged when they show, only when someone clicks.

Controls are blunt. Turning them off is account-wide, under account-level automated assets in the Assets page. You can also pause or remove individual dynamic sitelinks; a paused one can be re-enabled, a removed one can't. To see how they perform, filter the sitelink assets report by the "Added by" attribute set to Google AI.

Our take: leave them on, but review them monthly the same way you review a search term report. If Google is surfacing your careers page on non-brand ads, pause it. If it found a page you'd forgotten that converts, promote it to a manual sitelink. Our responsive search ads guide covers the same give-and-take with Google's automation on headlines.

How do you see sitelink performance in Google Ads?

1. Open the Assets page and go to the Associations view, then the sitelink card. It shows stats at the account, campaign and ad group levels.
2. Read clicks carefully. Google notes the Clicks column combines clicks on the ad headline and on the asset when they showed together. It is not "clicks on this sitelink."
3. Segment by click type to isolate clicks on the sitelink itself.
4. Don't add up the rows. Each sitelink row counts its own impressions; the total row counts distinct impressions that contained a sitelink. Four sitelinks served together in one ad show 1 impression each on their rows and 1 on the total.
5. Check conversions by final URL in your analytics, since each sitelink lands on a different page.

Where sitelink advice breaks down

• You don't control serving. Google picks which assets show and how many, by auction. Low Ad Rank means fewer or none.
• With vs. without isn't a test. Position drives both sitelink eligibility and CTR. Compare sitelink versions over time, not sitelinks against no sitelinks.
• Automation can replace your copy. Dynamic sitelinks can show instead of yours. Audit them or you're reporting on links you didn't write.
• Low volume ad groups won't tell you much. A sitelink with 40 clicks a month needs months before its conversion rate means anything. Use judgment on relevance there and save the data calls for high-volume ad groups.

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