GOOGLE ADS GLOSSARY

The Google Ads Glossary includes all the concepts, metrics, terminologies and more that you can refer to, and gain a better understanding of the system.

A

Access & Security – this is the section in the admin area of your Google Ads account where you can assign roles to other users. So, you can add and remove users, and you can also upgrade or downgrade user access to your account. Some of the key roles include read-only access, standard access and manager access.

Ad – this is the advert and is what people see when they search on Google. And it comes up under the sponsored results, usually above the organic search results. The main features of an ad are headlines, descriptions, final URL and display paths. There are different ad types in Google Ads including responsive search ads (RSA) and dynamic search ads (DSA).

Ad Group – this resides in the campaign and is a grouping of your ads and keywords. And in each campaign, you’ll need at least one ad group, and you should usually have between five and fifteen ad groups in each campaign – each with its own tightly themed ads and keywords.

Ad Rank – this is a feature that determines where on the search results page your ad will appear. It’s determined by the maximum bid for your keyword and the quality score of the keyword.

Ad Preview and Diagnosis – is a feature in Google Ads that shows you how your ads appear on Google. So, you can use it to search with any of your keywords and then pick a location to see if your ads are appearing for people in that location. This is much better and more effective than searching for your ads on Google. And if your ads are not appearing, the tool will show you why that is.

Ad Relevance – it is one of three quality score factors that you need to work on and improve if you want to see an improvement in your scores. You can view it by adding it in the reports from the Columns section, when you add Quality Score and the other two factors. You will see it has one of statuses when Quality Score has been determined and these will be: Below Average, Average or Above Average. So, you should work on all to try and get them to ‘Above Average’.

Ad Schedule – also known as day parting, this campaign feature gives you control over the days and hours to run your ads. The default setting is that your ads will always run, but you can change it to whatever makes sense for your campaign. For example, you can run ads on Monday to Friday only. Or you can run them on all days but in the morning only. And this can be adjusted easily.

Ad Strength – this is an ad feature and shows how well your responsive search ad is likely to perform and how to improve it. It’s rated on the headlines and descriptions and on how unique they are, whether they have popular keywords and how many headlines you have. And the rating for each ad can be poor, average, good or excellent.

Advertiser Verification – Google now requires every advertiser in Google Ads to be verified. So, this means you will need to provide business registration and certification documents to verify your business. According to Google this helps to build trust with users and helps with transparency. And when you have been verified, you will be able to add your business name and logo.

Asset Library – you will find this section in the Tools section under Shared Library. And this is where you can find all the images, sitelinks, structured snippets and text headlines and descriptions for your ads. And you can click on each of the assets in there to get more details and insights that relate to them.

Assets – these are blocks of shareable data such as images, sitelinks, videos, headlines, descriptions and more that make up your ad with useful business information. This is what users see on Google when they search for your products or services.

Attribution – this feature assigns credit to each touch point of the conversion path. So, it looks at all the ways that people interact with your campaigns on their way to conversion. Currently, the default attribution model is data-driven attribution.

Auction Insights – Is a report that reveals how your campaign is performing against other advertisers in auction results when you appear with them. Some of the key metrics will show how impressions you are getting; how often you are being outranked; how often you appear in the top positions and other metrics.

Audiences – these are groups of similar users that represent your target segments. You can create these audiences in Google Ads and then target them with relevant ads on Google and its partner sites and apps.

Automated Assets – these are assets that are created automatically in your campaign based on the content on your website. So, it will create sitelinks for example for pages that are relevant for your ads and keywords. You can turn off these assets and only focus on those you create manually.

Average CPC – this is the average amount you are paying for clicks for each keyword, ad group, ad, campaign and so on. You can increase or decrease your average CPC by adjusting your bids up and down.

B

Bid – the maximum amount you are willing to pay for each click-through to your website. So, you’ll set a maximum bid limit for each keyword, however nowadays we mostly use automated bidding, so the system sets the bids automatically based on the context.

Bid Simulator – it’s a tool that shows how you can impact your Search traffic by adjusting your maximum cost per click (CPC) bids. So, the simulator shows what your clicks, conversions and spend will likely be for each bid adjustment it recommends.

Bid Strategy – is the mechanism for how you bid and place your ads in the search engine results pages. Because search advertising is an auction, you need to pick one of the available bid strategies for the type of goal you’ve picked at campaign setup. And that can be an automated or manual bid strategy.

Broad Match – is a keyword syntax that allows you to control the search queries that trigger your ads on Google. So, this determines who sees your ads and the volumes of impressions, clicks and conversions you get. There are three main match types, and from least to most restrictive they are broad, phrase and exact match. Negative keyword is a match type too and this blocks searches that are not relevant for your campaign.

Budget – your budget is the maximum amount you are willing to spend in your campaign daily. You can set this at the campaign level on the settings page and you an easily update it up or down according to your requirements. You can also create a shared budget and then assign it to multiple campaigns.

Business Logo – this is the brand identity of your business and should be added as one of the assets in your campaigns. This identity helps your ad stand out from other ads in the search results and helps to boost click through rates and clicks. It appears as a favicon next to your ad.

Business Name – like the Business Logo, Google Ads now allows you to add your business name in Assets. And this will appear above your sponsored text ads in the search results. This helps to identify the business behind the ad and helps with branding.

C

Call Extension – is an asset that allows you to add your phone number and receive calls to your business directly from your ad, on mobile devices. And with call tracking in place, you can see which keywords and ads have been driving calls for your business.

Call Only Ad – an ad that reaches searchers on mobile devices from where they are able to call the business directly. These differ from other ad types in that they focus only on driving calls for your business, and not a click through to your website. However, if you do provide a final URL with the ad, then users can also click to get to the website. You are charged the same way as a click on a normal text ad.

Callouts – these are assets or extensions that appear next to your main ad. And their role is to highlight some key points about your business, products or services. You should add at least two callouts to each campaign, but the more you add the better.

Campaign – a campaign is where you promote and advertise your business, products or services to reach people who are searching on Google. So, you begin by selecting your goal and then setting targeting features like locations, languages, bid strategy and more. And then you’ll create your ad groups where you add your ads and keywords.

Change History – is a section in your campaigns where you can see what changes have been made in your campaigns. You’ll see for example keywords and ads added and removed, budget changes, bid strategy updates and so on. And you will see both manual and automated changes and you can undo some of them.

Click Through Rate (CTR) – this is like Interaction Rate and measures the ratio of clicks on your links to impressions your links get. The formula is clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. It is used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

Click – this is a direct action on an ad by a user, which directs them to a landing page that’s being promoted by the advertiser. However, a click can also be on a lead form to fill out a form and a phone number that makes a call.

Conversion – is an any action on your website or ad, that’s important for your business. So, this can be a purchase, a download, form submission, page view or any key action that you are tracking that you want visitors to take on your website. You can track this by setting up conversion tracking.

Conversion Rate – is an important metric that shows how effective your website is at turning visitors into customers. So, it shows the percentage of people who’ve visited your website and then gone on to complete an important action like a purchase or a whitepaper download. The average conversion rate is about 5%.

Conversion Tracking – a tool that helps you track conversions like purchases, form submissions, downloads and any other key action for your business. You can create conversion tracking in Google Ads but doing it in Google Analytics has many more benefits.

Cost – this is the amount you spend over a certain period like a day, week or month. The actual cost you pay depends on the budget that you set and other secondary factors like how effective Google is at filtering out invalid traffic. Most advertisers focus on their daily and monthly advertising spend.

Cost Per Click (CPC) – this is the amount you pay when a searcher sees your ad on Google and clicks it. So, you pay for each ad click and this varies depending on the level of competition and demand for the keywords you are bidding on.

Cost Per Conversion – is a metric that measures how much you are paying for each conversion, whether that’s a purchase, lead form, phone lead, whitepaper download or any action you are tracking. It’s calculated by dividing the total cost of advertising by the number of conversions.

D

Demand Gen – it’s a campaign type in Google Ads that allows you to reach and engage your audiences on YouTube, Discover and Gmail. It’s an AI based campaign type, and the system places your ads based on context.

Device – the device is where your ads appear for a searcher on Google and this can be a computer, mobile or tablet. These are the three main devices in the account. And you can advertise on all of them or choose the ones you want to advertise on.

Display Network – Google has partnered with over 3 million websites and apps through its AdSense program. And you can advertise in these platforms by creating a Display campaign and choose specific ones to advertise on or allow the system to make the selection for you.

Display Path – this is an ad feature and there are two display paths for each ad. It’s a good place to add your keywords because this creates the Display URL and makes your ad look more relevant to searchers.

Dynamic Search Ad – is an ad type that’s automatically created from your website content to target relevant searches on Google. It creates a headline for your ad and picks the URL to promote and then you supply a description that relates to your product or service.

E

Exact Match – is a keyword match type that controls the searches that trigger your ads on Google. And it is the most restrictive because it matches only to searches that are in the exact same format as your keywords and some close variants.

Expected CTR – this is one of three factors that determine your quality scores. And the others are landing page experience and ad relevance. You will work on your keywords and ads to improve the expected click through rate and that will help to improve your quality scores.

Experiments – this feature allows you to run experiments in your campaigns and test different things like bid strategy, keywords, text ads, search and display campaigns and much more. These are powerful experimentation tools and Google recently updated them to improve performance.

F

Final URL – also known as the landing page, this is where you send your visitors when they click on your ad. It also contains the Display URL which is the domain in the URL including any display paths that you add to it.

G

Goals – these are conversions that you are tracking in Google Ads and Google Analytics. Some common goals you can set up are purchases, form submission and call tracking.

Google Ads – is the world’s leading pay per click (PPC) advertising platform that provides advertisers with tools to promote their businesses, products and services on Google and across its network of millions of partner sites. This also includes advertising on its own platforms like Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Shopping and others.

Google Ads Editor – it’s a free tool provided by Google that you can download to your computer and use offline. So, you can use it to manage your campaigns offline and make bulk changes to your campaigns, which is often hard to do in Google Ads. So, it says you a lot of time and makes your advertising more effective.

Google Analytics – is a web analytics platform that allows you to track your website and analyze the traffic you are getting. And you can customize its controls. It’s a free platform and you can link it with your Google Ads account, to get more detailed analysis of your PPC campaigns.

Google Merchant Center – is a Google Shopping platform where you submit your product feeds and update and manage your products. And you will link your Merchant Center and Google Ads and then create your Shopping campaign to begin advertising.

I

Image Assets – these are pictures that relate to your business, products or services you can add to your account and then apply to your ads. So, they appear in the search results next to your ad, and help to make your ads look more prominent and boosts your click through rates.

Impression – each time your ad is shown on Google for a search, that is counted as an impression.

Interaction – for sponsored ads, this is a click on the ad, that takes the user to your website. So, it’s like the Click metric and shows how many interactions your ads, keywords and campaigns have had.

Interaction Rate – this is like click through rate (CTR) and measures the ratio of clicks on your links to impressions your links get. The formula is clicks ÷ impressions = CTR. It is used to gauge how well your keywords and ads are performing.

Invalid Click – a click on a sponsored link that has no probability of generating value.
Of all searches, 30% of them go to sponsored links. And roughly 24% of these are valid. And 6% are invalid clicks.

IP Exclusions – a feature that allows you to exclude Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from your ads. You add them in campaign settings and that prevents your ads from being seen by users with the IPs that you’ve added.

K

Keyphrase – a keyphrase is what you add in your campaign to target search queries on Google. A keyphrase will have two or more keywords and will describe the product or service that you are promoting. And you can use the Keyword Planner tool in Google Ads to find keyphrases and keywords to bid on.

Keyword – is a word that you add in your campaign and closely relates to the product or service that you want to promote. It makes up part of a keyphrase and when it matches a search query or term in a Google search, then your ad will appear in the results.

Keyword Planner – it is a free tool in Google Ads that you use to conduct research to find keywords to bid on. So, you can do the research and any relevant keywords you find, you can easily add in your campaigns. This tool also helps with forecasting, to see how much you’re likely to spend on your keywords.

L

Landing Page – in Google Ads this is also known as the Final URL and is where your visitors land when they click your ad. This page should be relevant to the keywords you’ve added and the searches that are conducted on Google and should include the promise made in the ad.

Landing Page Experience – this is one of three factors that determine your quality scores. And the others are expected CTR and ad relevance. You will work on your keywords and the page content to improve your targeting and attract the right people and to give them a great website experience. This will improve your quality scores.

Languages – this is a targeting feature in campaign settings that allows you to pick the languages you want to target. There are approximately 42 languages to pick from and you are also able to target all languages in the campaign.

Lead Form – is an ad extension that allows you to add a lead form under your ad in the search results. So, users can submit their details here without visiting your website and you get the details sent to you when they have submitted.

Locations – this is a targeting feature that allows you to choose where your ads are seen. So, you can use it to target cities, towns, zip codes, countries, counties and territories. And you can also use its advanced targeting options like Radius targeting and Bulk targeting to reach your audiences.

Location Options – this is a feature that allows you to adjust your location settings to determine who sees your ads based on where they are located. Currently there are two options to select from and you can target people who are present in your locations and those who show interest, or only those who are only present in your targeted locations.

M

Manual CPC – is a bid strategy that allows you to set your bids manually, unlike other bid types. So, you can set a bid manually for each keyword and adjust up or down based on performance. Unlike automated bid strategies, this one gives you great control over your bids and what you pay for each click.

Match Type – is a keyword feature that you use to control the type of search queries that trigger your ads. The four match types available are exact, phrase, broad and negative match.

Maximize Clicks – an automated bid strategy that helps you to get as many clicks as possible for your budget. So, the system bids to try and get you as much traffic as possible each day. But you can put a bid limit, so you don’t pay over a certain amount for each click.

Maximize Conversions – this is an automated bid strategy that bids to get you as many conversions for your budget. The system will bid automatically at auction time and set the bids accordingly. It’s also a smart bidding strategy and you can use it along with Target Cost Per Action (CPA) bidding to control how much you spend for each conversion.

Maximize Conversion Value – it is an automated bid strategy that helps you to get as much value for your budget. So, if you are tracking purchases for example, it will bid to get as much revenue to help increase your profitability. And you can set a target return on ad spend to notify the system what results you get from every dollar you spend on the campaign.

N

Negative Keyword – it’s a match type that helps you to block searches that are not relevant for your business. So, you’ll add a list of negative keywords as you set up your campaign and throughout as you are advertising and getting traffic. This will help to improve the performance of your campaign.

Networks – Google has the Search and Display partner networks where you can launch your ads to reach your audiences. The Search network includes hundreds of search partners like Ask.com, About.com, AOL, CNN and others that display search results. And the Display network includes over 3 million websites and apps where you can advertise.

O

Objective – this is the first campaign setting to update when you are creating your new campaign. And there are multiple objectives to pick from and Sales and Leads are the primary ones. The objective you pick determines the goals you have, the campaign types to choose and many other campaign settings.

Optimization Score – is a metric on the Recommendations that measures the likely performance of your campaigns. Applying or dismissing the recommendations in there improves your score and gets it closer to 100%. So, it’s important to update the recommendations regularly to improve your campaigns and train the machine learning system.

Overview – this is a default page in Google Ads that shows you a summary of your key reports and metrics. It’s a good place to start when you want to see how your campaigns are performing and what insights are important to your ads.

P

Pay Per Click (PPC) – it is a form of online advertising where you pay each time users click on your ads. It’s usually associated with first-tier search engines like Google and Bing which provide platforms to help you set up your own advertising campaigns. Google’s PPC platform is known as Google Ads and Microsoft’s is Microsoft Ads.

Performance Max – is an automated campaign type in Google Ads, that uses the power of AI and machine learning to target your audiences. And it reaches users across all of Google’s networks and inventory including Search, Gmail, YouTube, Maps and many others.

Performance Planner – is a tool in Google Ads that helps you to create a plan for your advertising spend and assess how changes may affect metrics and overall performance. With it you can assess forecasts, explore outcomes, understand opportunities and manage budgets across your accounts and campaigns.

Phrase Match – is a match type that wraps keywords in double quotes. And it matches to searches that have the same keywords in the quotes and searches with other words that come before and after. It’s one of the more restrictive match types.

Policy Manager – it’s a troubleshooting feature that helps you to fix disapproved ads or ads that are limited because of a policy issue. So, you can check Policy Manager to see which ads are affected and follow the policy guidelines there to fix them. You can also see any appeals you’ve made and what the status is.

Portfolio Bid Strategy – this is an automated bidding strategy that you create at the account level. And you can assign it to multiple campaigns, ad groups and keywords to help you reach your performance goals. It includes smart bidding strategies like target CPA, target ROAS, Maximize Conversions and other strategies.

Q

Quality Score – it’s a keyword metric that measures the quality of your advertising efforts. And it includes three factors that contribute to its score: ad relevance, expected click through rate and landing page experience.

R

Radius Targeting – is an advanced location targeting feature in campaign settings. This allows you to target people within a specific radius of your choosing. And its most ideal businesses that want to circle an area they want to target, like within 20 miles of a zip code for example.

Recommendations – is a feature in Google Ads that provides you with insights and opportunities to improve the performance of your campaigns. You can accept or dismiss the recommendations there based on your goals and how they relevant they are for your campaigns. And as you do this, your optimization score will score.

Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) – is a bid strategy in campaign settings that allows you to state what returns you want to get from your ads. So, if you want to make a return of $3 for each $1 you spend in Google Ads, then you’d set a ROAS of 300%. It’s also a smart bidding strategy that focuses on conversions and is linked to the Maximize Conversions Value bid strategy.

S

Search Network – is one of two main networks in Google Ads, the other being the Display network. The Search Network includes hundreds of search engines and websites that have partnered with Google, to display ads when people search. Some of these include some of the biggest websites on the web including CNN, Ask.com and many others including Google’s own properties like YouTube.

Search Terms – these appear in the search terms report and show the searches that people used on Google when your ads appear. In the report you will see how many impressions you got for each search term and which ones did or didn’t receive clicks.

Search Campaign – this is the primary campaign type in Google Ads, and its main purpose is to place your ads on Google when people search for your products or services. It’s an auction-based campaign type and you bid on keywords that you add in the campaign and ad groups.

Shared Budget – this is an advertising budget that you create at the account level and then share with all the campaigns that you want to include. So, you create a budget and then assign it to all the campaigns that you want to share the budget. It helps you gain control over your spend.

Shopping Campaign – a campaign type for promoting your products on Google search and its shopping platform. To get started, you’ll need to submit a feed to Google in Merchant Center, and then create a campaign in Google Ads to promote your products and drive sales.

Sitelinks – these are ad extensions, and they help you to promote other key pages on your website. So, they appear below the main ad, and they are clickable. You can also add descriptions to sitelinks, and they make your ads look more prominent in the results, especially in top positions.

Sponsored – these are text ads that appear in the search results on Google when people search. They are created in Google Ads. For each search, there can be up to seven ads presented in the sponsored area and how many you see depends on many factors, for example how competitive the search query you’ve used is.

Structured Snippet – is an asset or extension that allows you to add key information about your business, like amenities, courses, service catalog and others. Structured snippets like other extensions can be added at the account, campaign and ad group levels.

T

Target CPA – this is a smart bidding strategy that’s linked to Maximize Conversions. And it helps you get as many conversions as possible at or below the target cost-per-action (CPA) you set. In your reports you will see that some conversions may cost more or less than your target.

Target Impression Share – this bid strategy automatically sets your bids to increase your ads’ chances of appearing in the search page area you select. The three areas you can select are (a) anywhere on the results page, (b) top of results page or (c) absolute top of results page. And you can set a maximum CPC bid limit, to prevent your ads from spending over the limit you set for each click.

Author

  • Hi, Mike Ncube is a leading digital marketing consultant who blogs about the best and latest digital insights. He writes about topics such as Google Ads, digital strategy, LinkedIn Ads, Email, SEO, Google Analytics and more. Reach out to him if you have any questions and subscribe to his blog to start learning.

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