AdWords Display URLs

Regarding display URLs in AdWords ads, Google states that the domain must be identical to the destination URL's domain.  But besides this rule, advertisers are free to incorporate keywords at the end of the display domain to be read as subfolders.  An example is this ad, which bolds the term for my query "sony laptop" at the end of the display URL:


The question begs to be asked, if we can add keywords to the end of a display URL why not incorporate those keywords before the domain via display URL subdomains?  Just to clarify, a subdomain is a domain that is part of a larger root domain, they read like this in a URL:


To my surprise, not many advertisers are utilising keywords in display URL subdomains.  It's a great opportunity to include an ad group's targeted term at the front of the display URL, so users read those relevant bolded keywords first.  Take advantage of it! 

The ad above with the subdomain "nokia-mobile-phones"  goes to the page "www.top10co.uk" which clearly doesn't include such a subdomain:



Google's AdWords help section confirms that this is a legal technique which is acceptable by AdWords.  However, when I phoned our Irish friends, the Adwords representative I spoke with told me this was not permitted - it's such a rarely used technique that even the Adwords rep's don't know about it!

So be sure to utilise this technique in your AdWords ads.  Also, remember that you can delete the "www." in display URLs which means 4 more characters for optimising your display URL. Now go... re-optimise those ads!