The Google AdWords Blog announced two additions to the program. The first is the ability to set goals in the opportunities tab within the AdWords console and the second is a new seller ratings extension available for some advertisers.

Goals in Opportunity Tab:

Google is rolling out a new feature in the Opportunities tab within AdWords that allows advertisers to set goals. The goals let you pick from three types of goals. They include:

• Maintain or Decrease Cost – Identify ideas that might help you maintain or decrease your current spend.
• Increase Traffic – Identify ideas that can help you get more traffic at varying cost levels.
• Balance Cost and Traffic – Review a mix of ideas that are aimed at either increasing traffic or decreasing costs.

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Based on your set goal, Google will offer suggestions and ideas to match your goal. You can change your goal and any time and Google will offer you different suggestions.

Seller AdWords Extension:

Google also announced a new product extension for display in the AdWords ads. The new extension is named the seller rating extensions. This extension pulls from Google Product search ratings to help searchers “identify highly-rated merchants.” The ratings are “aggregated from review sites all around the web,” said Google.

The ratings will only show if you have 4 or more stars, and you have at least 30 reviews. Plus, this is only available on English-language users searching on Google.com and may be rolled out broader in the future.

Related Topics: Google: AdWords

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz