This comprehensive Google Ads Glossary can serve as your go-to guide when you’re navigating the waters of Google Ads terminology.
Ad Group
Ad groups live within your campaigns. An ad group is a bucket of closely-related keywords and the ads they’re attached to.
Ad Rank
How Google prioritizes ads display. This is determined by your ad’s cost-per-click (CPC) bid and quality score. If you’re interested, you can learn more about the inner workings of the Google Ads auction system.
Ad Schedule
The dates and times you want your ads to be seen. If you know most of your donations are made during work hours, you might use ad scheduling to pause your campaigns during evening hours when folks are less likely to donate, so you can concentrate your budget during high-potential hours.
Ad
The text ad that is shown to users in the search engine results page after searching a phrase that matches a keyword in your account.
AdWords Express
Essentially the automated version of Google Ads. You create an account, write an ad, and let Google do the rest from there.
Automated Rules
A tool that automatically updates your campaigns, ad groups, or keywords based on conditions you set. Automated rules can help you minimize the time spent monitoring your account on a day-to-day basis.
Bid Adjustments
A way to automatically increase or decrease your CPC bid based on a variety of settings (including time of day, day of the week, device, location, etc.). If you know that the conversion rate for donations on mobile devices is very low, you may set a -50% bid adjustment for mobile devices in your donation campaign (indicating that you are willing to spend 50% less for clicks from users on mobile phones).
Broad Match
A keyword match type that permits your ad to be shown whenever someone searches that phrase, or a phrase that is similar to it. For example, if you input the keyword volunteer opportunities as a broad match keyword, it may match to search queries like volunteer positions or community service ideas.
Campaign
Campaigns house ad groups. Budget, location targeting, language targeting, and other settings are all set at the campaign level. You will have multiple campaigns within your account.
Change History
A report that shows you all changes made in your account, including the date and time it was made and the email address of the user who made it. This is helpful for identifying the cause of any unexpected changes in performance.
Click
Engagement with your ad and the page it links to. Every time a user is served your ad and clicks on it, a click is logged.
Click Through Rate (CTR)
Total Clicks / Total Impressions. This tells us the percentage of people that clicked on an ad after it was served to them. Typically, the higher, the better!
Conversion
A key action taken on your website that indicates user engagement (video views, email signups, donations, etc.). You need to configure these as goals in your Google Analytics account. Conversions are key to understanding the value of site traffic and campaigns!
Cost per Click (CPC)
Total Cost of Your Clicks / Total Number of Clicks. What you actually paid for a click on your ad.
Daily Budget
The maximum amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign in a given day.
Destination URL
The URL of the page on your site that you send users to after they click on your ad.
Display URL
The URL that is actually shown to users in your ad. This doesn’t need to exactly match the destination URL, as long as you aren’t baiting-and-switching users. For example, your destination URL may be mynonprofit.org/support/donate/recurring, and your Display URL may simply be mynonprofit.org/donate.
Exact Match
A keyword match type that tells Google to only show the ad affiliated with the keyword if a user types that phrase in exactly. If you input [volunteer opportunities] as an exact match keyword, it will show only when someone types volunteer opportunities into their Google search bar.
Geotargeting
The setting that allows you to choose in which territories your ads show. You can get as specific targeting a congressional district, or as broad as an entire county.
Google Analytics
Google’s free web analytics tool that allows you to see exactly what users are doing on your website. This is crucial in understanding how your Google Ads campaigns are doing.
Google Display Network
The Google Display Network (GDN) contains more than 2 million websites, videos, and apps where your ads can appear. Combined, the GDN reaches over 90% of all internet users, and is a great place to show your ads to audiences who might be earlier in the buying and consideration process compared to those on Google Search.
Impression
An impression is counted any time your ad appears on the results page of Google search.
Keyword
Words or phrases that you choose to associate with your ads. When a user searches for something on Google that matches to a keyword in your account, the affiliated ad will appear in the search results.
Keyword Planner
A tool in the Google Ads interface used for finding new keywords, estimating search volume, and other competition metrics.
Language Targeting
A key setting at the campaign level. Be sure that both your keywords and ad copy match the language you are targeting!
Limited by Budget
You’ll sometimes see a campaign in your account being flagged as being limited by budget. This simply means that the budget you have set for the campaign isn’t high enough to accommodate all of the searches for the keywords you’ve chosen. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — just an indication that you could potentially spend more on that campaign.
Low Search Volume
You’ll sometimes see a keyword in your account being flagged as having low search volume. This means that the relevant keyword(s) doesn’t have a high search history in Google. Again, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing — just an indication that those keywords will likely generate fewer impressions and clicks than other keywords.
Maximum CPC Bid (Max CPC)
The maximum amount you’re willing to pay for a click.
Negative Keywords
A keyword match type that excludes your ad from being served for certain search terms. Negative keywords can help you avoid having ads served for irrelevant or inappropriate searches. For example, an organ donation nonprofit that wants to reach people searching for organ donation may include clothing or electronics as negative keywords to avoid showing their ads to people searching for places to donate household items.
Phrase Match
A keyword match type that permits your ad to be shown only when a specific phrase is included somewhere in a search. For example, adding volunteer opportunities as a phrase match keyword would allow your ads to be shown for volunteer opportunities in Ohio, or for student volunteer opportunities, but not for volunteer positions near me.
Position
A number from 1-10 that communicates where on the search engine results page (SERP) your ad was shown. The closer to #1 your position is, the closer to the top of the page your ad was shown.
Quality Score
A score from 1-10 that Google assigns to keywords to indicate the quality that the keyword, ad, and landing page are delivering to users. The closer to 10, the better! Google’s Ad Rank considers quality score when determining which ads to serve, and typically the higher your quality score, the lower the CPC for a keyword.
Search Term, or Search Query
The words or phrase that a user actually typed into Google. These searches are then matched to the keywords you included in your Ad Groups, and that is how ads are chosen to be delivered. In Google Ads, this report is called the Search Terms report. In Google Analytics, it’s referred to as the Search Queries report.
Sitelink Extension
An additional link that lives at the bottom of your ad that points people to additional pages on your website. These are set up by you, and are a great way to take up more virtual real estate on the SERP. Google requires Grant accounts to have at least 2 unique sitelink extensions in their account.