The Google AdWords blog has announced a new test of the advert format so that longer headlines are appearing on some ads that appear above the search results on Google. For some ads where each line appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation, the first description line is moved to the headline and separated by a hyphen. As a result, some top placement ads will have longer headlines.

Google says that in testing they have found that the longer headline results in higher clickthrough rate for those ads, as well as other top ads that appear beside them. Therefore they say it creates a better experience for users by highlighting more information in the ad (and of course more revenue for Google too!).

While only some ads will be shown with the longer headline, advertisers can now increase their chances of this happening by ensuring that each line of the ad appears to be a distinct sentence and ends in the proper punctuation (e.g., a period or a question mark).