Google Advisor provides a comparison of various financial products available in the market. Until now, the service was restricted to the U.S. only. However, searches for the word ‘mortgage’ on Google U.K. have now started providing interesting results:

Google Comparison ad for ‘mortgage’

At the top of the paid search results is an ad by Google promoting their own mortgage comparison service. Comparison ads were introduced back in May 2009, but were limited to a few states in the U.S.A. When users click on a comparison ad, they are taken to a list of details from various lenders, and users can fill in specifics to view a list of the services matching their requirements.

Google comparison of UK mortgages

An interested user can then call one of the Google pay per call numbers to connect to a specific lender for further information, or the user can request a call back from the provider.

The good thing about this facility from Google is that the user’s personal information and phone number are protected from the financial advisors. Users are given an 03-number from which they are indirectly connected to the financial services provider.

In most cases, Google provides detailed results about the amount of interest that would accumulate in various accounts, thus helping the user to decide what kind of financial arrangement suits them best. However, as far as mortgage deals are concerned, they seem to have a very limited list on offer.

Other sites such as Bankrate, Money Supermarket, Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans offer similar but much more comprehensive services, so users are not likely to switch to Google’s comparison service immediately. However, the appearance of Comparison ads could signal the upcoming launch of Google Advisor, which could gradually turn into a significant source of competition for many of the currently popular financial service comparison sites.

AdWords Comparison Ads

As the name suggests, this new service will make it possible for users to compare offers provided by various advertisers.

Google Comparison Ad unit

The basic Comparison Ad allows users to specify what they are looking for, in a bit more detail than is normally possible on a regular search query, and then delivers a comparison of different offers side-by-side.

Users that engage with a comparison ad will now have to click on a promotion listed within the comparison table that they think is of interest to them. If they are not satisfied, they can provide some more details about what they want, to see better targeted ads.

When the user identifies a satisfactory offer, the advertiser can be contacted directly on the phone – making it a pay per call ad – or a quote can be requested.

Google will anonymise the user’s number with a unique code, through which the advertiser can then contact the user. Advertisers will not receive any user information unless the user wishes to release it. Advertisers will pay Google only if a user calls on the phone number allocated for that advertiser or if the user fills out a form requesting a quote.

The comparison ads feature is very speedy, as it provides relevant offers in less than one second, and the ads will only be for real products. There will be no teaser rates or bait and switch offers.

At present, the service is only available to a few users in some states in the U.S.A and it is only for advertisers in the mortgage and refinance field.

Ad Sitelinks

Just like certain organic results include sitelinks, certain ads can now also feature sitelinks via a new feature called Ad Sitelinks.

Advertisers with extremely high quality ads will be able to specify up to 10 links to deeper pages on their site. These can be links to special offers, featured products, support pages or other popular pages on the site.

Up to 4 Ad Sitelinks will show up below the regular ads for keywords that meet certain quality requirements:

1. The ad should have the first position above the organic search results
2. The ad should have a very high quality score, typically 10/10
3. The Ad Sitelinks URLs must direct users to pages that are part of the main website, and allow users to navigate freely

The links can be updated without changing the ads, as frequently as desired. The option to add sitelinks shows up in the campaign settings tab, under the “Networks, devices and extensions” section, and is labeled with the text “Show additional links to my site within my ad”.