Ad group

A set of keywords, ads, and bids you manage together, in order to show ads to people likely to be interested in them.

Each of your campaigns is made up of one or more ad groups.

Separate ad groups are best for different product types you offer (if you’re a caterer, for example, you could have different ad groups for wedding catering and party catering).
Ad groups in Display Network campaigns can include targeting methods other than keywords, like using demographics or remarketing lists.

AdWords

Google's online advertising program. Through AdWords, you can create online ads to reach people exactly when they're interested in the products and services that you offer.

- Google AdWords is a product that you can use to promote your business, help sell products or services, raise awareness, and increase traffic to your website.
- AdWords accounts are managed online, so you can create and change your ad campaign at any time, including your ad text, settings, and budget.
- There's no minimum spending commitment, and you set and control your own budget. You choose where your AdWords ad appears, set a budget that's comfortable for you, and easily measure the impact of your ad.

Campaign

A set of ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a budget, location targeting, and other settings. Campaigns are often used to organize categories of products or services that you offer.

- Your AdWords account can have one or many ad campaigns running.
- Each campaign consists of one or more ad groups, a budget, language and location settings, distribution settings for the Google Network, and other settings.
- You can create separate ad campaigns to run ads in different locations or using different budgets.

Click

When someone clicks your ad, like on the blue headline of a text ad, AdWords counts that as a click.

- A click is counted even if the person doesn't reach your website, maybe because it's temporarily unavailable. As a result, you might see a difference between the number of clicks on your ad and the number of visits to your website.
- Clicks can help you understand how well your ad is appealing to people who see it. Relevant, highly-targeted ads are more likely to receive clicks.
- In your account statistics, you'll see the clickthrough rate (CTR), which tells you how many people who’ve seen your ad end up clicking on it. This metric can help you gauge how enticing your ad is and how closely it matches your keywords and other targeting settings.
- Note that a good CTR is relative to what you're advertising and on which networks. To help increase your clicks and CTR, start by creating great ad text and strong keywords to make ads that are highly relevant and very compelling to your customers.

Daily budget

An amount that you set for each ad campaign to specify how much, on average, you'd like to spend each day.

- You set an average daily budget for each AdWords campaign, and then the system will aim to show your ads as much as possible until your budget is met.
- When your budget is reached, your ads will typically stop showing for that day. How quickly your ads are shown during a given day is determined by your ad delivery option.
- It's possible that you'll be charged less or sometimes slightly more than your average daily budget amount on a given day. To help make sure that your ad can run a little more on days when it's very popular, your daily budget is used like an average: on any single day, you can receive up to 20% more in costs than your daily budget, but other days will be capped at a lower amount to make up for it. This is called overdelivery.
- However, in a given billing period, you're never charged more than the average number of days in a month (roughly 30.4) times your daily budget. For campaigns that are paused in the middle of the month or that otherwise don't run for the full month, you may see discrepancies between your average daily budgets and your total charges.

Destination URL

The URL address for the page in your website where you'd like people to be sent after they click your ad.

- For each ad, you'll specify a display URL (shown to customers with your ad) and a destination URL (used to determine where people are taken when they click your ad). Google's policy is that both URLs be within the same website (meaning that they share the same domain).
- Your destination URL isn't visible in the ad, so you can use it to direct people to a specific page within your site without cluttering your ad. For example, an ad could use a clean display URL like example.com to show with the ad, while using a more specific destination URL like example.com/camera_purchase_page.html to link customers to the most relevant page.

Display URL

The webpage address that appears with your ad, typically shown in green text.

- For each ad, you'll specify a display URL that's shown to customers and a destination URL that's used to determine where people are taken when they click your ad.
- Display URLs are meant to give users a clear idea of what page they'll arrive at when they click an ad. For this reason, Google's policy is that both URLs be within the same website (meaning that they share the same domain).
- Your display URL will appear in your ad with the "www." prefix and in lowercase (even if you enter it with capitalized letters). If your website address begins with a subdomain, your display URL will appear with the subdomain, like "support.google.com."
- Google can only show up to 35 characters of your display URL (or 20 characters for WAP mobile ads). If your display URL is longer, a shortened version will be shown with your ad.

Impressions

How often your ad is shown. An impression is counted each time your ad is shown on a search result page or other site on the Google Network.

- Each time your ad appears on Google or the Google Network, it's counted as one impression.
- In some cases, only a section of your ad may be shown. For example, in Google Maps, we may show only your business name and location or only your business name and the first line of your ad text.
- However, when someone searches using Google Instant, an impression can be counted when one of these occur:
 Person begins to type and then clicks anywhere on the page like a search result, ad, or related search
 Person types a search and then clicks the "Search" button, presses Enter, or selects a predicted query from the drop-down menu
 Person stops typing, and the results are displayed for a minimum of three seconds
- You'll sometimes see the abbreviation "Impr" in your account showing the number of impressions for your ad.

Keywords

Words or phrases describing your product or service that you choose to help determine when and where your ad can appear.

- The keywords you choose are used to show your ads to people. Select high-quality, relevant keywords for your ad campaign to help you reach only the most interested people, who are more likely to become your customers.
- When someone searches on Google, your ad could be eligible to appear based on the similarity of your keywords to the person's search terms, as well as your keyword match types. Keywords are also used to match your ad to sites in the Google Network that are related to your keywords and ads.
- How keywords relate to Google searches and web content
- A great keyword list can help improve the performance of your ads and help you to avoid higher prices. Poor keywords can ultimately cause you to have higher prices and lower ad position.
- You can add match types to your keywords to help control which searches your ad can be matched with.

Landing page

The webpage where customers end up after they click your ad. This page is usually the same as your ad's destination URL.

- For each ad, you specify a destination URL to determine where people are taken when they click your ad. Unless your webpage uses a redirect for tracking purposes, your landing page and destination URL will be the same webpage.
- Google's policy is that your landing page and display URL (the webpage shown in your ad) must be within the same website, meaning that they share the same domain.
- Your landing page experience is one of several factors that helps determine a keyword's Quality Score. The experience of a landing page is represented by such things as the usefulness and relevance of information provided on the page, ease of navigation for the user, how many links are on the page, and more.

Maximum CPC bid

A bid that you set to determine the highest amount that you're willing to pay for a click on your ad.

- If someone clicks your ad, that click won't cost you more than the maximum cost-per-click bid (or "max. CPC") that you set. For example, if you set a $2 max. CPC bid, you'll never pay more than $2 for each click on your ad. The actual amount that you pay is called the actual CPC and is shown in your account's "Avg. CPC" column.
- A higher bid generally helps your ad show in a higher ad position on the page.
- You'll choose between manual bidding (you choose your bid amounts) and automatic bidding (you set a target daily budget and the AdWords system automatically adjusts your max. CPC bids on your behalf, with the goal of getting you the most clicks possible within that budget). With manual bidding, you'll set one maximum CPC bid for an entire ad group, but can also set different bids for individual keywords.

Maximum CPM bid

A bid that you set to determine the highest amount that you're willing to pay for 1,000 impressions (times your ads are shown).

- CPM stands for cost-per-thousand impressions, so you pay for each set of a thousand showings of your ad rather than paying for the number of clicks that you receive. CPM bidding is best suited for advertisers who are focused on brand awareness rather than sales or website traffic.
- You set a maximum CPM bid (or "max CPM") and then won't pay more than that amount for every 1,000 impressions your ads receive.
- A higher bid generally helps your ad show higher on a page and show more often.
- You can set a maximum CPM bid for an entire ad group and also set different bids for individual placements.

Optimization

The process of making changes in your account to help improve your advertising success. You can optimize elements like your ads, keywords, and bids.

- Based on your advertising goals, optimization can involve ad text improvements, new keywords or changes to keyword settings, strategic changes to your bids, better organization within your campaign, and changes to ad targeting options.
- When optimizing your account, focus on a specific goal like improving your Quality Scores, increasing conversions like sales and your ROI or profits, or reducing costs.
- Successful advertisers tend to optimize their ad campaigns regularly to keep their campaigns running smoothly and successfully.
- Your account has a number of tools to help you identify and make improvements, including the Opportunities tab.

Quality Score

A measurement of how relevant your ads, keywords, and landing page are to a person seeing your ad. Higher Quality Scores can lead to lower prices and better ad positions.

- A Quality Score is calculated every time your keyword matches a customer's search. You can get a sense of your keywords' Quality Score for the Search Network in the "Keyword Analysis" field of your account.
- A high Quality Score means that your ads, keywords, and landing page seem to be very relevant to what a customer is searching for and also relevant to one another. The more relevant your ads and landing pages are to the user, the higher your Quality Score. You can review the factors that affect your Quality Score -- expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience -- by selecting the Keywords tab and clicking on the white speech bubble Ad disapproval bubble next to any keyword's status.
- Your Quality Scores will affect your ad position on the page as well as your prices.
- Quality Score is evaluated depending on where your ad appears, meaning that you have a different Quality Score on Search and Display Network sites, as well as a slightly different formula for mobile devices.

Relevance

How closely the elements of your ad campaign match what a person seems to be looking for.

- Your ads and keywords should directly relate to the content on your website, especially the ad's landing page. When people see your ad, they should be able to understand what kind of product, service, or other content they'll find on your site.
- To encourage you to create relevant ad campaigns that accurately represent your products or services, the AdWords pricing system is partly based on relevance. A highly relevant ad, keyword list, and landing page is generally rewarded with a higher position on the page for potentially less money.
- Relevance is part of your Quality Score, a formula that Google uses to measure how useful your ad, keyword, and website are to a customer. Relevant ads tend to get higher Quality Scores.