Google AdWords Glossary
Howdy guys! Feeling bogged down by all the terms and acronyms in Google AdWords? Here’s a wicked table of terms you can print, share or save to help you get your head around what’s what in the Google AdWords interface.
| Campaign | Campaign
| An ad campaign made up of, a budget, ad groups and ad settings. |
| Campaign Type
| Where you want your ads to be seen.
Search Network only –which means Google search only.
Display network only (also known as AdSense) – means your ads will show up on other websites like YouTube, tier one websites and blogs.
Search network and display – means a combination of both. | |
| Ad Group
| A group of keywords around a common theme which in turn have their own budget and settings.
Example: If you have a furniture store you might want to have an ad group for coffee tables, dining tables, side tables. Each group will then have keywords relating to those categories – timber dining tables, dark wood dining tables and so on. | |
| Keyword
| The most important part of AdWords. These are the words or search terms that you choose your ads to be linked to so you come up when someone searches it. | |
| Ad | Quality Score
| Your ads are given a score which is defined by a combination of ad relevance, description, keywords, presence of ad extensions and the landing page the ad takes people to.
Note: you can have a competitive budget but if you have a low quality score your ad has less chance of appearing. |
| Impression
| A measurement for how many times your ad is shown in Google. | |
| Ad rank
| What position your ad will rank in the search results (1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th position) This is decided by your quality score and your bid. | |
| Ad extensions
| Additional information about your business or quick links like map directions, a call button or to jump to a section of the website. | |
| Landing page | The website page a searcher is taken to when they click the ad.
Note: it’s super important for the landing page to be relevant to the ad! | |
| CTA (call to action) | Something that encourages a person to interact with the ad.
Example: Learn More, Shop Now, Buy Now, etc. | |
| CTR (click through rate) | Used to measure the rate at which people see your ad and click through to your website. | |
| Cost | Bid
| Each keyword has a price or bid. Some words are more competitive than others. In order to play in the space, you need to have a competitive bid. |
| Bid strategy | Google allows for different bidding strategies depending on what metric is most important to you: impressions, clicks, view, engagement, etc. | |
| PPC (pay per click)
| An ad billing type simply means you only pay when someone clicks. | |
| CPC (cost per click) | The most common bidding type which means you only pay when someone clicks your ad. | |
| CPM (cost per thousand impressions) | A bidding method where you pay when someone sees your ad. | |
| Daily budget | How much you are willing to spend per day.
Note: keep your average transaction value in mind. Often the higher the value of the product is the higher the budget will need to be (example: law services) | |
| Billing threshold | An amount of costs that, when reached, triggers you to be charged for those costs. |
