Google is dropping the “followers on Google+” social annotation from AdWords ads as of today.

Social extensions will no longer show with ads on Google Search and search partners starting December 10, 2015.

We encourage you to explore all relevant ad extensions to highlight important aspects of your business. If social presence remains important to your business, you can continue highlighting this information using sitelinks or callout extensions.

This is not surprising given the recent changes we have seen with Google+ distancing itself from the search results, most notably with the change to the local search results.

The feature has always looked second best when you compare it to Bing’s version of the social extension which highlights Twitter followers.  And with many more brands using and promoting Twitter over Google+, numbers for Twitter followers is much more impressive as one to showcase.

Will be see a future change to AdWords that will showcase Twitter followers?  It is always a possibility, considering the agreement between Twitter and Google in regards to access to Twitter’s data firehouse.  But advertisers can add links to social media accounts via sitelinks to their AdWords ads.

H/T Search Engine Land