Google added a new section to the about final URL expansion in Search document named "How the landing page logic works for Travel Promotion Ads & Booking Links within Search Campaigns for Travel." This explains the relationship between your targeting settings and your landing pages and how the final URL expansion is related to that.
Google wrote:
Based on the current Search Campaigns for Travel configuration, the relationship between your targeting settings and your landing pages is highly specific. While features like Final URL expansion and URL rules are used to find the right audience, the Feed remains the "single source of truth" for the final destination for Travel formats (Travel promotion ads and Booking Links).
A critical feature of Search Campaigns for Travel is that landing pages are always pulled directly from the feed (for Travel promotion ads and booking links ). Even when using advanced AI Max targeting features, the system defaults to the URLs provided in your travel data:
- Final URL expansion : While Final URL expansion is enabled and used to identify traffic relevant to your intent, the actual landing page shown will still be the one specified in your feed.
- Targeting vs. Destination: AI Max uses your website content and URL rules to decide where to show the ad, but it sends users to the Feed Item’s landing page.
Google calls this the "Feed-First" landing page rule.
Search Campaigns for Travel allows you to use standard Search campaign rules to refine your targeting, but these don’t override the feed's destination logic. Here is how the URL rules interact with the Feed:
- URL inclusion rules: These are used as a targeting mechanism to help the AI understand which parts of your site are relevant to the search. However, the resulting click will still land on the feed-provided URL.
- URL exclusion rules: You can use these to prevent the AI from using certain pages for targeting, for example, "Privacy Policy" or "Blog" pages. Note that if a feed item happens to point to a URL you've "excluded" in the settings, the feed item remains the priority. The exclusion rule only prevents the AI from using that page to find new search terms.
Google also explained the location of Interest and brand terms:
- Precision matching: Because Search Campaigns for Travel supports Location of Interest and brand search terms (brand inclusion), the system can match a specific intent, for example, a branded search for a hotel in a specific city, directly to a feed item.
- Note: Branded Search Terms are available for Text Ads and Travel Promotion Ads (not Booking Links, which are entirely targeted based on the feed)
- Dynamic delivery: When the match is made, the feed pulls the exact landing page for that specific property or activity, ensuring that the end user doesn’t have to navigate from the user’s homepage to find what the user searched for.
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