Guides: PPC & Digital Marketing Glossary

The order in which your ad appears on a page in relation to other paid ads. An ad position of “1” means that your ad is the first ad on a page.

A preference that determines which ad in your ad group should show when you have multiple ads active. Rotation settings include Optimize and Rotate Indefinitely. Optimize uses Google’s machine learning to automatically choose the ad most likely to win the auction. Rotate Indefinitely will rotate your ads evenly across all auctions. This setting is important to check to ensure that you have a proper balance between testing of your messaging and performance of your account.

A status for each ad that describes whether that ad is able to run, and if so, whether there are any policy restrictions on how or when it can run. Common ad statuses include Under Review, Eligible, Approved and more.

Automated ad extensions created by Google to help improve your ad's performance. Automated extensions include dynamic sitelinks, locations, seller ratings and more.

A statistic that describes how your ad is typically positioned on search results pages.

The default matching option, broad match means that your ad may show if a search term contains your keyword terms in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads can also show for singular or plural forms, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations. Sticking with the, broad match, default is a great choice if you don't want to spend a lot of time building your keyword lists and want to capture the highest possible volume of ad traffic.

You can add a modifier, a plus sign (+), to your broad match keywords if you'd like your ads to show when someone searches for close variants of your keywords in any order. Close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms. Unlike broad match, using a modifier excludes synonyms or related searches. For this reason, it adds an additional level of control. Using, broad match modifier, is a good choice if you want to increase relevancy even if it means you might get less ad traffic than broad match.

Feature that enables users to display a Google forwarding or business, phone number, along with their PPC ad.

A PPC text ad extension that allows you to promote unique offers, like free shipping or price matching.

Another name for Call Extensions, where you can add a business phone number to your ad. The “click-to-call” comes from users having the ability to simply click on the phone number in your ad to place the call.

Electronics that can display a PPC ad. Supported devices include desktops/laptops, mobile devices and tablets.

The webpage address that is shown with your ad. This is often different from your destination URL and much shorter. Just make sure you only have one display URL per ad group and that it uses the same root domain as your destination URL.  AdWords allows 35 characters for Display URLs, and if your domain is longer than that they may show a shortened version.

The most specific of the keyword match types and triggers your ad when users type your keyword exactly as is and in the same order.

Keyword-level settings that help control how closely the keyword needs to match a person’s search term in order to trigger your ad. These include broad, modified broad, phrase, exact and negative match types. You also have the ability to specify whether or not you want your phrase and exact match terms to show for plurals, misspellings or close variants.

Type of, extension, that includes a business address and phone number into text ads. These can be a great way to help attract more customers to local businesses.

A specific keyword phrase that consists of 2 or more words. Most advertisers use long-tail keywords to target the customer at or near their buying stage. These also generally have less competition since they are more specific, which leads to reduced CPCs.

Matching option that allows advertisers to control when their ad triggers for a particular search query.

Feature that allows people to text you directly from your ad to book an appointment, get a quote, ask for information, or request a service.

Advertisers add negative keywords to their account so their ads do not display when a customer types in a search query containing that keyword.  Negative keywords help you qualify the clicks to your site more effectively.

Keyword setting that allows ads to show only when someone's search includes the exact, phrase, of your keyword or close variations of the specific keyword phrase.

Feature for PPC search ads that showcase your services or products by linking people directly to what interests them on your site. Price extensions appear below your text ad and can have up to 8 cards of different options and prices.

Feature of PPC search ads that showcases promotional offers below your text ads. Promotion extensions highlight deals for your customers to help generate new sales for your business.

An automated extension shown underneath PPC text ads on Google. Once launched, seller ratings, showcase the overall rating of a business on a 5-star scale or in an "XX%" positive format. The ratings can come from Google sources and approved third-parties.

Feature that displays links to different pages of a website beneath the ad text. Sitelinks, can appear in ads at the top and bottom of the SERPs and for some search partners.  Sitelinks need to direct users to a different destination URL than what your main ad points to.

Feature that appears alongside your PPC search ads that showcase a list of products or services with a predefined header. The, structured snippet, predefined headers include brands, destinations, and courses as well as several other header options.