Google Ads Search key terms

The real-time process Google runs when a search triggers ads: it screens eligible ads, then ranks them using bid, quality signals, and the expected impact of ad formats to decide which ads appear and where.

A score Google calculates at auction time to decide whether your ad shows and in what position. It combines your bid, quality signals such as expected click-through rate and landing page experience, and expected asset impact.

A one-to-ten estimate of how relevant your keyword, ad, and landing page are to someone searching. It is diagnostic rather than a direct auction input, though its components feed Ad Rank and influence costs.

A keyword setting that controls how closely a search must relate to the keyword before your ad can show: broad (related meanings), phrase (meaning included), or exact (same meaning).

A keyword or phrase added to a campaign, ad group, or shared list that stops your ads from showing on searches containing that term.

The actual word or phrase a person typed into Google that triggered your ad. Search terms can differ from the keywords you bid on because of close variants and broad matching.

Google's prediction of how likely your ad is to be clicked when it appears for a particular search. It is one component of Quality Score and a factor in Ad Rank.

An estimate of how useful and relevant your destination page is to someone who clicked your ad, considering original content, ease of navigation, and transparency. It is a Quality Score component.

The top-level account structure that holds one or more ad groups plus shared settings: budget, bidding strategy, networks, locations, languages, and scheduling.

A grouping inside a campaign that holds related keywords, ads, and landing pages around a single theme, letting you control bids and creative for that theme.

A campaign setting that limits where your ads can appear, defined by country, region, city, radius around a point, or location groups; you also choose whether to reach people in, or interested in, those areas.

A campaign setting that specifies the days and hours your ads are eligible to run, optionally paired with bid adjustments for particular time blocks.

A free tool inside Google Ads for researching search volume and trends, getting keyword ideas, and forecasting clicks, impressions, and cost for proposed keywords and bids.

A campaign type that uses your website's content to match searches and generate headlines automatically, filling the ad with the landing page most relevant to the query.

A group of people defined by interests, habits, or prior interactions, such as remarketing lists or in-market audiences, that you can add to a Search campaign to target, observe, or bid differently.

An ad format where you supply multiple headlines and descriptions and Google assembles combinations to match the query, learning which assets perform best over time.

A rating from poor to excellent that reflects how many unique and relevant headlines and descriptions a responsive search ad has and how well it is likely to perform.

Fixing a headline or description to a specific position in a responsive search ad so it always shows there, which reduces the combinations Google can test.

Extra pieces of information, such as sitelinks, callouts, snippets, calls, and images, that can appear with your ad; the umbrella term for what used to be called extensions.

A link to another page of your site shown beneath the main ad, letting people jump straight to a specific product, offer, or store page.

A short, non-clickable phrase shown with your ad that highlights a benefit, such as free shipping, flexible returns, or 24/7 support.

A header plus a list of values, such as Brands: Nike, Adidas, that appears under your ad and shows specific offerings, helping people see at a glance what you sell.

The landing page address people reach after clicking your ad. It must share the ad's display domain and is where tracking parameters are appended.

A bidding strategy where you set the maximum cost-per-click yourself for each keyword or ad group, optionally with bid adjustments; Google does not change bids automatically.

An automated bid strategy that sets bids to get as many clicks as possible within your budget, optionally limited by a maximum cost-per-click you specify.

An automated bid strategy that sets bids to get as many conversions as possible at the average cost per acquisition you specify, relying on historical conversion data.

An automated bid strategy that sets bids to maximize conversion value while aiming for the return on ad spend you specify, so higher-value conversions attract higher bids.

A single bid strategy shared across several campaigns, useful for pooling conversion data and steering performance toward one target across those campaigns.

A percentage increase or decrease applied to your base bid for a specific condition, such as device type, location, or time of day.

The amount you are willing to spend per day on average across a month. Google may spend up to twice that on a given day but keeps total monthly charges within the monthly limit.

The specific customer behavior you track and count as valuable, such as a purchase, lead form, or call, configured in Google Ads with a value and a counting setting.

The length of time after a click or view during which a conversion can still be credited to that interaction, set individually for each conversion action.

The rule that decides how credit for a conversion is divided among the ad interactions a customer had before converting, such as last click or data-driven attribution.

A feature that sends hashed first-party customer data, such as email addresses, along with your conversion tag so Google can match conversions more accurately while protecting privacy.

A report listing the actual queries that triggered your ads, along with clicks and impressions, used to find new keyword ideas and add negative keywords.

A zero-to-100% estimate of how well an account is set up and performing against Google's recommendations, with suggestions you can apply or dismiss.

The percentage of impressions you actually received out of the total impressions you were eligible for, often split into share lost to budget and share lost to rank.

Return on ad spend: conversion value divided by advertising cost, expressed as a ratio or percentage, showing how much revenue each unit of spend generated.