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The Complete PPC & Google Ads Glossary

From campaign basics to advanced, pro-level bidding and automation concepts - every PPC and Google Ads term explained in plain language by Search Savvy's team.

97 Terms, A to Z

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Covers Search, Shopping & Display

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A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

Account Structure Beginner: The way campaigns, ad groups, and keywords are organized within a Google Ads account, directly affecting relevance and Quality Score.
Ad Copy Beginner: The written text of an ad, including headlines and descriptions, crafted to earn clicks and match search intent.
Ad Extension Intermediate: Additional information (like sitelinks, call buttons, or price info) attached to an ad to improve visibility and click-through rate.
Ad Group Beginner: A set of closely related keywords and ads within a campaign, grouped around a shared theme.
Ad Rank Advanced: The value used to determine an ad's position, calculated from bid amount, Quality Score, and expected impact of ad extensions.
Ad Scheduling (Dayparting) Intermediate: Setting specific days and hours when ads are allowed to run, used to focus spend during high-converting periods.
Audience Targeting Beginner: Showing ads to users based on demographics, interests, or past behavior, rather than only keywords.
Automated Bidding Intermediate: Bid strategies where Google's algorithms automatically set bids to hit a specific goal, such as Target CPA or Maximize Conversions.
Average CPC Beginner: The average amount actually paid for a click, calculated as total cost divided by total clicks.

B

Bid Adjustment Intermediate: A percentage increase or decrease applied to bids based on factors like device, location, time, or audience.
Bidding Strategy Beginner: The overall method used to set bids in the ad auction, ranging from manual control to fully automated, goal-based bidding.
Brand Bidding Advanced: Bidding on your own (or a competitor's) brand name as a keyword, often to protect visibility or capture comparison searches.
Broad Match Intermediate: A keyword match type that shows ads for searches related to a keyword's meaning, offering the widest reach with the least control.
Budget Pacing Advanced: How evenly a campaign's daily budget is spent throughout the day, affecting how consistently ads show.

C

Call-Only Ads Intermediate: An ad format designed to drive phone calls directly, showing a phone number instead of a link to a website.
Campaign Beginner: The top-level structure in Google Ads containing one or more ad groups, defined by a shared budget, goal, and targeting settings.
Click Share Advanced: The percentage of total available clicks in the auction that your ads actually received.
Conversion Action Intermediate: A specific action (purchase, form fill, call) defined in Google Ads as valuable, used to measure and optimize campaign performance.
Conversion Tracking Intermediate: The system that records when a click results in a valuable action, essential for measuring and optimizing campaign ROI.
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) Beginner: The average amount spent to generate one conversion, such as a sale or lead.
Cost Per Click (CPC) Beginner: The amount an advertiser pays each time someone clicks their ad.
Cost Per Mille (CPM) Intermediate: The cost an advertiser pays per 1,000 ad impressions, used mainly for awareness-focused Display and Video campaigns.
Custom Intent Audience Advanced: An audience built from users actively researching products or services related to specific keywords or URLs you define.
Customer Match Advanced: A targeting feature that lets advertisers upload their own customer data (like email lists) to reach or exclude those users.

D

Daily Budget Beginner: The average amount an advertiser is willing to spend on a campaign per day.
Demographic Targeting Beginner: Showing ads based on characteristics such as age, gender, household income, or parental status.
Device Bid Adjustment Intermediate: A setting that raises or lowers bids depending on whether a user is on desktop, mobile, or tablet.
Display Network Beginner: Google's network of millions of websites, apps, and videos where image and banner ads can appear.
Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) Advanced: An ad format that automatically generates headlines and landing pages from a website's content, targeting relevant searches without manual keywords.

E

Enhanced CPC Advanced: A semi-automated bidding feature that adjusts manual bids up or down based on the likelihood of a conversion.
Exact Match Intermediate: A keyword match type that shows ads only for searches with the same meaning or intent as the exact keyword.
Expanded Text Ad Intermediate: A legacy text ad format with multiple headline and description fields, largely replaced by Responsive Search Ads.
Experiments (Drafts & Experiments) Advanced: A Google Ads feature that lets advertisers test campaign changes against a live control group before rolling them out fully.

F

Feed (Shopping Feed) Intermediate: A structured file of product data (price, availability, images) submitted to Google Merchant Center to power Shopping ads.
Frequency Cap Advanced: A limit on how many times a single user can be shown the same ad within a given time period.

G

Geo-Targeting Intermediate: Showing ads to users based on their physical location, from country-level down to a specific radius.
Google Ads Editor Advanced: A free desktop application for making bulk changes to Google Ads campaigns offline before uploading them.
Google Merchant Center Intermediate: The platform where retailers upload their product feed to make it eligible for Shopping ads and free listings.
Google Tag Manager Advanced: A free tool for managing tracking tags and pixels on a website without needing to edit code directly.

H

Headline (RSA Headline) Beginner: One of several short text variations submitted for a Responsive Search Ad, which Google mixes and tests automatically.
Household Income Targeting Advanced: A demographic targeting option that shows ads based on the estimated income percentile of a user's household.

I

Impression Share Intermediate: The percentage of impressions an ad actually received out of the total it was eligible to receive.
In-Market Audience Intermediate: A pre-built Google audience of users actively researching or comparing products and services in a specific category.
Invalid Clicks Advanced: Clicks identified by Google as fraudulent or accidental, automatically filtered and excluded from billing.
IP Exclusion Advanced: Blocking specific IP addresses (such as a company's own office) from seeing or clicking on ads.

J

JSON Feed (Product Feed Format) Advanced: A structured data format sometimes used to submit or manage product feed information for Shopping campaigns.

K

Keyword Insertion Advanced: A dynamic feature that automatically inserts the searcher's matched keyword into an ad's headline or description.
Keyword Match Type Beginner: The setting (broad, phrase, or exact) that controls how closely a search query must match a keyword to trigger an ad.
KPI (Key Performance Indicator) Beginner: A specific, measurable metric, such as CPA or ROAS, used to evaluate whether a campaign is meeting its goals.

L

Landing Page Experience Intermediate: One of the three components of Quality Score, measuring how relevant, useful, and easy to navigate a landing page is.
Lead Form Extension Intermediate: An ad extension that lets users submit their contact details directly within the ad, without visiting a website.
Life Event Targeting Advanced: An audience targeting option that reaches users around major life milestones, such as moving homes or getting married.
Location Extension Beginner: An ad extension showing a business's address, useful for driving foot traffic to a physical location.

M

Manual CPC Beginner: A bidding strategy where the advertiser sets individual bids for keywords or ad groups themselves, rather than letting an algorithm decide.
Maximize Conversions Intermediate: An automated bidding strategy that sets bids to get the most conversions possible within a given budget.
Maximize Conversion Value Advanced: An automated bidding strategy that optimizes for the highest total conversion value rather than the highest number of conversions.
Merchant Center Intermediate: See Google Merchant Center.
Multi-Channel Funnels Advanced: A reporting view showing all the touchpoints and channels that contributed to a conversion, not just the last click.

N

Negative Keyword Beginner: A search term explicitly excluded from a campaign so ads don't show for irrelevant queries.
Network (Search / Display) Beginner: The set of surfaces where ads can appear - the Search Network (Google search results) or the Display Network (websites and apps).
N-gram Analysis Advanced: Breaking down search term reports into recurring word combinations to spot patterns for new keywords or negatives.

O

Optimization Score Intermediate: A percentage score in Google Ads estimating how well a campaign is set up to perform, with suggested improvements.
Organic vs. Paid Beginner: The distinction between unpaid search results (organic) and results appearing because of a paid ad.
Outstream Ads Advanced: Video ads that play on partner websites and apps outside of YouTube, typically muted by default until a user interacts.

P

Performance Max Advanced: A goal-based campaign type that uses automation to show ads across all Google channels (Search, Display, YouTube, Shopping) from one campaign.
Phrase Match Intermediate: A keyword match type that shows ads for searches containing the meaning of a keyword phrase, in the same general order.
Pixel (Conversion Tracking Pixel) Advanced: A small snippet of code placed on a website that reports back to an ad platform when a visitor completes a tracked action.
Placement Targeting Intermediate: Choosing specific websites, apps, or videos on the Display or YouTube network where ads should (or shouldn't) appear.
Price Extension Intermediate: An ad extension displaying a scrollable list of products or services with their prices directly in the ad.
Product Listing Ad (PLA) Intermediate: See Shopping Campaign.

Q

Quality Score Beginner: Google's rating (1–10) of the relevance and quality of a keyword, ad, and landing page, which directly affects cost-per-click.
Query (Search Term) Beginner: The exact word or phrase a user typed into Google before an ad was shown, visible in the search term report.

R

Reach and Frequency Advanced: A planning tool for video and Display campaigns that predicts how many people ads will reach and how often.
Remarketing List Intermediate: A saved audience of users who previously visited a website or app, used to target ads specifically to them.
Responsive Search Ad (RSA) Beginner: An ad format where multiple headlines and descriptions are submitted, with Google automatically testing combinations to find top performers.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) Beginner: Revenue generated for every unit of currency spent on advertising, a core metric for evaluating campaign profitability.

S

Search Term Report Intermediate: A report showing the actual queries that triggered ads, used to find new keywords and negative keyword opportunities.
Shopping Campaign Intermediate: A campaign type that shows product images, prices, and store names directly in search results, powered by a product feed.
Sitelink Extension Beginner: An ad extension adding extra clickable links beneath an ad, directing users to specific pages like "Pricing" or "Contact."
Smart Bidding Intermediate: A category of automated bidding strategies that use machine learning to optimize for conversions or conversion value in real time.
Smart Campaign Beginner: A simplified, largely automated campaign type designed for small businesses with minimal setup or ongoing management.
Split Testing (A/B Testing) Intermediate: Running two or more versions of an ad, landing page, or bidding strategy to compare performance and identify the winner.

T

Target CPA Intermediate: An automated bidding strategy that sets bids to achieve as many conversions as possible at or below a target cost-per-acquisition.
Target ROAS Intermediate: An automated bidding strategy that sets bids to achieve a target return on ad spend across a campaign.
Targeting Method Beginner: Any setting used to define who sees an ad, including keywords, audiences, demographics, and placements.
Third-Party Cookie Advanced: A tracking file set by a domain other than the one a user is visiting, historically used for ad targeting and now being phased out by browsers.
Top of Page Bid Advanced: An estimate of the bid needed for an ad to appear at the top of the first page of search results for a given keyword.

U

UAC (Universal App Campaign) Advanced: A campaign type that promotes an app across Search, Display, YouTube, and Google Play using automated targeting and creative.
URL Parameter Advanced: Additional text appended to a landing page URL to pass tracking information, such as which ad or keyword drove the click.
User List Intermediate: See Remarketing List.

V

Video Action Campaign Advanced: A YouTube campaign type built to drive conversions directly, using automated targeting and formats optimized for action.
View-Through Conversion Advanced: A conversion counted when a user sees (but doesn't click) an ad, then later converts, typically tracked for Display and Video.
Viewable CPM (vCPM) Advanced: A bidding option where advertisers pay based on viewable impressions rather than all impressions served.

W

Website Call Conversions Intermediate: A conversion tracked when a user calls a phone number listed on a website after clicking through from an ad.

X

XML Feed Advanced: A structured product or content feed format, sometimes used alongside or instead of standard CSV feeds for Shopping campaigns.

Y

Year-over-Year (YoY) Performance Beginner: Comparing a campaign's metrics to the same period one year earlier, used to account for seasonality in reporting.

Z

Zip Code Targeting Intermediate: A geo-targeting method that shows ads only to users within specific postal code areas.

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