Confused by Google’s ongoing change from Destination to Final URL? It’s not surprising. True to form, Google implement a major change requiring agencies to devote a huge number of man hours and barely even a communication other than the normal vague announcements.
Just to clarify, this is what you can expect:
- Destination URLs will be automatically moved to the new “Final URL” field for adgroups that don’t have cross-domain redirect URLs.
- Google will send you an alert in your AdWords account to let you know if any of your adgroups weren’t upgraded.
- Destination URLs can no longer be used. Adwords Editor will prevent you from posting changes to ads still using destination URLs. If you use tracking you’ll need to work with Google who will facilitate the required upgrade.
- Ads with destination URLs that have not been updated will stop serving “in a few months”, whatever that means. What we do know is that Google will be reluctant to cost themselves. So I wouldn’t be too worried about your timescales. It’s like Bing’s efforts to change the logins for Bing Ads accounts which has been happening for several years now! What Google have said though is that they will let you know one month before your ads stop serving by email and with an alert in your account.
Good luck.
