Google Adwords
Billing threshold
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Campaign status
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Clickthrough rate (CTR)
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Consolidated billing
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Google Places
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In-line editing
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Interaction rate
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Invalid clicks
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Keyword Planner
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Multiple sign-in
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My Change History
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Negative keywords
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Opening image
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Overdelivery
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Overdelivery credit
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Pacific Time (PST or PDT)
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Parked domain site
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Pending campaign
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Phrase match
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Placement Tool
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Placements
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Play rate
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Product ads
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Product feed
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Product filters
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Product target
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Promotional code (coupon)
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Quality Score
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Recommended daily budget
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Referrer URL
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Remarketing
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Return on investment (ROI)
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Search Network
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Search partners
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Search terms report
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Segment
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Serving (video ads)
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Shortform and longform videos
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Social annotations
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Statistics table
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Targeting group
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Targeting method
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Text ad
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Text overlay ad
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Traffic Estimator
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TrueView video formats
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URL
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Under review
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Video publisher
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With issues (video ads)
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Ad group default bids
A bid amount that applies to all of the keywords and placements in your ad group that don't have individual bids. This bid sets the maximum amount that you're willing to pay for each click on your ad for any keyword and placement without its own bid. Your ad group default bids are used when there aren't more specific bids that apply. For example, if you set a different bid for one of your keywords, that bid will be used (instead of any ad group default bid) whenever that keyword triggers your ad to appear. An ad group can have several kinds of default bids: a default bid that's used when your ad appears on any network, and a Display Network bid that's used only when your ad appears on the Display Network. Your default bids are displayed above the tabs on your ad group page in your account. If the Display Network bid is marked "Off," it means that you're opted out of the Display Network. How keyword and placement bids interact
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.
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. 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 (Google chooses bid amounts within your 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.
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.
Not yet serving (video ads)
A video ad is not yet approved to appear on YouTube but is under review.
Approved (adult)
Ad can run, but not in all situations due to restrictions on adult content.
Site suspended
Ad cannot run because the webpage it promotes violates AdWords policy.
Not serving (video ads)
All formats (headline, description, video, etc.) of the video ad have been disapproved.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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. Keywords are also used to match your ad to sites in the Google Network that are related to your keywords and ads. 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.
Exact match
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Exception request
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Expected clickthrough rate
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Family status
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Filter
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First page bid estimate
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Form of payment
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Google Network
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Google forwarding phone number
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Google+ Page
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IP address
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Image ad
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Impressions
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Keyword Tool
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Keyword insertion
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Keyword matching options
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Keyword status
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Keywords
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Landing page
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Landing page experience
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Limited by budget
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Location targeting
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Low search volume
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Managed placements
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Manual bidding
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Manual payments
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Maximum CPM bid
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Mobile ad
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Monthly invoicing
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Ended campaign
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Enhanced CPC (ECPC)
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Error sites
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Broad match
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Budget order
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Bulk edits
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Cache
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Card verification number (CVN)
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Contextual targeting
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Conversion
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Conversion Optimizer
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Conversion Tracking
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Conversion page
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Conversion rate
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Cookie
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Cost-per-click (CPC)
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Cost-per-thousand impressions (CPM)
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Cost-per-view (CPV)
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Customer ID
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D-U-N-S number
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Display Network
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Display Planner
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Display partners
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Domain
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Eligible
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End date
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AdSense
A Google product that pays website owners for showing relevant AdWords ads on their site. Sites in the AdSense program can show ads that are relevant to the site's content. If you're approved, Google gives you a piece of code to put on your site, you choose where to place ads, and then you earn money when visitors click on the ads.
Google Account
A Google-wide username and password that can be used to access various products, including AdWords. Your Google Account also contains information that applies across products, such as your preferred language and some privacy settings. If you created an AdWords account or have signed in to access any Google product, then you've created a Google Account. You can view and change the information in your Google Account at any time by signing in at google.com/accounts
Automatic bidding
A bidding method that automatically sets and adjusts your maximum bids (the most you'll pay for each click on your ad). The other option, manual bidding, lets you choose your own bid amounts. Automatic bidding is the simplest way to establish how much you might pay for each click on your ads -- you set a budget, and AdWords does the rest. You don't need to choose bid amounts for your ad groups, keywords, or placements. With automatic bidding, you set a target daily budget and the AdWords system automatically adjusts your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bids on your behalf, with the goal of getting you the most clicks possible within that budget. For more control, you can also set a bid limit to prevent your bids from being set over that amount. While setting a bid limit can offer tighter control, know that it can also restrict your ad position or the number of clicks that your ad receives. If at any time you don't like the bid suggestions, you can easily switch to using manual bidding which gives you full control to set the bid amounts yourself. Automatic bidding isn't available with the following features:"Display Network only - Mobile apps" campaign type Bid adjustments based on day and time Campaigns that use shared budgets
Auto-tagging
A feature that automatically creates custom destination URLs to help you track your ad performance using website tracking programs like Google Analytics. If you have multiple ads that link to the same page on your website, auto-tagging will attach a parameter to your ads' destination URLs to help you tell which ad was clicked for each visit to your site. Google Analytics and similar programs can use the information in auto-tagged URLs to tell you which AdWords keywords brought a visitor to your site, which campaign that keyword was from, and how much that click cost. By default, auto-tagging is turned off. You can check whether auto-tagging in on, as well as turn it on or off, by going to the Preferences page under the My Account tab.
Ad extensions
A feature that displays extra business information with your ad such as an address, phone number, more webpage links, or a coupon. Most ad extensions allow you to add your additional business information to a basic text ad. Some examples of ad extensions include offer extensions (adds a printable coupon to your ad for use offline) and ad sitelinks (adds additional webpage links). Ad extensions are particularly useful for accomplishing specific business goals. For example, if you're a local business or a business with multiple store fronts, you might want to encourage people to visit or call your physical store. One way to do this is by using location extensions, which allow you to include address information with your ad. Ad extensions function differently depending on the type, and provide different reporting information based on how people on the web can interact with them. For example, call extensions provides information about how many times a person clicked your ad to call your business.
Automated rules
A feature you can set up to automatically make changes to your ad statuses, budgets, and bids, so you don't have to spend so much time manually monitoring your campaigns. Here are some examples of what you can set a rule to do automatically: change your budget on certain days of the week, turn on and off certain ads for a special promotion, and pausing keywords that aren't performing well. You choose the requirements for your rule, including what types of changes it can make, how often it will run, and at what time of day. It's especially important to select minimum and maximum limits for your bids and budgets so that you don't accidentally spend more than you want or decrease your traffic. To get started creating rules, just click the "Automate" button on the Campaigns, Ad groups, Keywords, or Ads tab in your account.
Analytics
A free Google product that provides in-depth reporting on how people use your website. You can use Google Analytics to learn what people do after clicking your ads. Google Analytics shows you how people found your site and how they explored it. From this information, you can get ideas for how to enhance your website. If you use Google Analytics and AdWords together, you can learn about what customers do on your site after clicking your ad. Use this information to help improve your customers' experience on your website, which in turn can help you increase conversions (like sales and signups) and your overall return on investment (ROI). To start using Analytics through your AdWords account, visit the Reporting tab and click "Google Analytics." You can also use Analytics separately at google.com/analytics.
Ad relevance
A keyword status that measures how closely related your keyword is to your ads. This status describes how well your keyword matches the message in your ads. For example, if someone searches for your keyword and your ad shows up, would your ad seem directly relevant to their search? There are three possible statuses you can get: above average, average, or below average. Having an "average" or "above average" status means that there are no major problems with this keyword's ad relevance when compared to all other keywords across AdWords. A "below average" status means that your ad or keyword may not be specific enough or that your ad group may cover too many topics. Try creating tightly-themed ad groups by making sure that your ads are closely related to a smaller group of keywords. Use this status to help identify keywords that might not be relevant enough to your ads to perform well. It's possible for a keyword to have a high Quality Score and low ad relevance (or vice versa) because AdWords looks at a number of different quality factors when determining Quality Score. Even if your overall Quality Score is high, looking at the individual factors can help you identify potential areas for improvement. To see the ad relevance status for your keywords, go to the Keywords tab on your Campaigns page and hover over the speech bubble icon next that's next to a keyword. Paused keywords will retain whatever scores they had when they were last active. Therefore, it may not be useful to look at these scores over time. We encourage advertisers to focus on active keywords when looking at their Quality Score sub-metrics, since these scores will be constantly updated.
Automatic payments
A payment setting in which advertising costs that you've accrued in your AdWords account are automatically charged to your form of payment. You're charged only after you've accrued advertising costs. You'll be billed either 30 days after your last payment, or whenever your costs reach your billing threshold (the set amount that triggers a bill). You can still make a manual payment at any time while on the automatic payment setting.
AdWords Editor
A powerful, free tool designed to help you manage your account offline and easily make a large number of changes at once. With AdWords Editor, you download your account and make all your changes offline before uploading them back to your AdWords account. You can perform detailed searches across campaigns, make multiple changes instantly, and even send other people your proposed changes before you make them in your account. Advertisers with any size account can use AdWords Editor, but it's particularly useful for advertisers with multiple campaigns and long lists of keywords or placements. To download AdWords Editor, visit google.com/adwordseditor.
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.
Ad group
A set of keywords, ads, and bids that is a key part of how your account is organized. Each ad campaign is made up of one or more ad groups. An ad group consists of one or more ads, keywords, placements, or other targeting methods. You also set a default bid for each ad group. We recommend that you create a separate ad group for each theme such as for each product you offer (like wedding catering and party catering), selling points (like free consultation and gourmet menus), or ways to describe your business (like caterer and on-site food service). The ads and keywords in each ad group should directly relate to that group's theme.
Ad delivery options
A setting that determines how quickly you want Google to use your budget each day: either spread throughout the day (standard) or more quickly (accelerated). This setting affects when during the day your ads are likely to show. This setting determines how your daily budget is allocated throughout the day, which in turn determines how quickly Google will try to show your ads during each day. For each ad campaign, you choose one of these delivery options for the ads in that campaign: Standard delivery (the default option) tries to show your ads throughout the entire day to make sure that you don't spend your whole budget in the morning and cause your ads to stop showing for the rest of the day. Accelerated delivery tries to show your ads more quickly until your budget is reached. With this option, your ads can stop showing early in the day if your budget is spent.
Average position (Avg. Pos.)
A statistic that describes how your ad typically ranks against other ads. This rank determines in which order ads appear on the page. You can see an "Avg. Pos." column for your ads, campaigns, and other elements, but average position is generally most useful to look at for your keywords. By seeing how your ad typically ranks when it's triggered by one of your keywords, you can try to influence your position by changing the keyword's bid. Your ad's rank can fluctuate (causing its ad position on the page to fluctuate as well), so your average position can help you gauge how often your ad beats other ads for position. However, the most important thing is to find what's profitable for you, which might not be to show in the top position. "1" is the highest position, and there is no "bottom" position. An average position of 1-8 is generally on the first page of search results, 9-16 is generally on the second page, and so on. Average positions can be between two whole numbers. For example, an average position of "1.7" means that your ad usually appears in positions 1 or 2. Average position may be less useful in optimizing for performance on the Google Display Network because of the diversity of websites on this network. If you want to measure performance on the Display Network, we recommend focusing on metrics such as conversions and ROI.
Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool
A tool in your account that helps identify why your ad might not be appearing. The tool also shows a preview of a Google search result page for a specific term, helping you see which ads are appearing for your keyword. Use this tool to check the status of your ad for a particular keyword. Once you enter a search term and other criteria like your language and location, the tool will tell you whether your ad is eligible to appear in that situation. If you want to see how your ad appears in context, it's better to use this tool than to do a search on Google. You'll see the exact same results as a Google search but won't harm your performance by accumulating ad impressions every time you look for your ad. To use the Ad Preview and Diagnosis tool, click the tool under the "Tools and Analysis" menu at the top of your AdWords account, or visit google.com/AdPreview.
Ad Rank
A value that's used to determine your ad position, where ads are shown on a page. Ad Rank is calculated using your bid amount and Quality Score. Ad Rank determines your ad position -- where your ad shows on the page in relation to other ads. The main components of your Ad Rank are your bids and the quality of your ads, keywords, and website as measured by what we call Quality Score. So even if your competition has higher bids than yours, you can still win a higher position at a lower price by using highly relevant keywords and ads. Your Ad Rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear, so your ad position can fluctuate each time depending on your competition at that moment.
Approved (limited)
Ad can run, but not in all situations due to policy restrictions such as those around trademark use and gambling ads.
Approved (non-family)
Ad can run, but not in all situations due to restrictions on content that we consider "non-family safe."
Disapproved
Ad cannot run as it is now because it violates AdWords policy.
Approved
Ad complies with our policies, so it's allowed to show for all audiences.
Ad status
Ad status 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. Some statuses are set by Google (like when an ad violates our advertising policies) while others are set by you (like when you pause or delete an ad). Find your ad's status by looking at the "Status" column in the Ads tab of your Campaigns page. We give your ad one of several approval statuses during and after our review to see if it complies with our policies:
Alternate email address
An additional email address that you can use to sign in to your Google Account. If you add an alternate email address to your account, you can sign in to your Google Accounts not only with the email address you used to set up the account, but also with the alternate email address. You'll use the same password to sign in with either email address. Your alternate email address can also serve as a way to help you get into your account if you ever forget your password. With some Google products, people will be able to see both your primary email address and your alternate email address. You can add, delete and change alternate email addresses at any time on your Google Accounts settings page at accounts.google.com.
AdWords API
An advanced feature that lets advertisers interact with and make changes to their AdWords account through applications they create. The AdWords API (application programming interface) allows developers to create and use applications that interact directly with their account details on the AdWords server. The API can help advertisers efficiently manage large AdWords accounts and campaigns. For example, you can compile your AdWords data to use with other systems like inventories, generate regular reports, and make campaign adjustments in bulk. To use the AdWords API, you'll need a My Client Center (MCC) account and a Developer Token. The AdWords API is a good option for advertisers who have a developer or programmer who has the technical skills. If you don't have these resources but still want an extra tool to help manage large changes to your account, try AdWords Editor instead.
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.
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.
Advertising policies
Guidelines for your ads, keywords, and website. Ads that violate our policies won't be able to run. Visit the AdWords Policy Center to review the guidelines that can apply to you. Google's advertising policies are designed to promote a good experience for people viewing our ads, to help you be successful with your ads, and to help make sure that ads follow applicable laws in the countries where they appear. All AdWords ads go through an approval process to ensure the ads are safe and appropriate for users. Every time you create a new ad or make changes to an existing ad, it will automatically be submitted for review to ensure that it follows our advertising policies. Ads that we find in violation of these policies will be marked as Disapproved or Suspended and will not be able to run while in that status.
Automatic placements
Locations on the Display Network where your ads can show and that are automatically matched to your keywords. These placements are different than managed placements which you specifically choose to show your ads. Here's how automatic placements work: Google uses contextual targeting to match your ads to relevant placements based on your keyword list, among other factors. For example, an ad group entirely focused around men's shoes could show ads on webpages about shoes. Your ads can appear on automatic placements only if you've selected one of these campaign types: "Display Network only - All features" or Search & Display Networks - All features." AdWords uses your keywords or other targeting methods to match your ads to automatic placements on the Display Network. If you don't want to use automatic placements, add managed placements to your ad group and leave the default targeting setting for placements.
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.
Average cost-per-click (Avg. CPC)
The average amount that you've been charged for a click on your ad. Average CPC is calculated by dividing the total cost of your clicks by the total number of clicks. For example, if your ad receives two clicks, one costing $0.20 and one costing $0.40, your average CPC for those clicks is $0.30. Average CPC is based on your actual CPCs (the actual amount you're charged for a click on your ad), which might be different than your maximum CPCs (the highest amount that you're willing to pay for a click). To see your average CPC amounts, look at the "Avg. CPC" column in one of the tables within your Campaigns tab.
Ad position
The order in which your ad appears on a page in relation to other ads. An ad position of "1" means that your ad is the first ad on a page. Ad position is determined by a formula called Ad Rank that gives your ad a score based on your bid and your Quality Score (a rating of relevance). So even if your competition bids more than you, you can still win a higher position -- at a lower price -- with highly relevant keywords and ads. Your Ad Rank is recalculated each time your ad is eligible to appear, so your ad position can fluctuate each time depending on your competition at that moment. Ads can appear on the top of a search results page, on the side of the page, or on the bottom of the 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. Keep in mind that your display URL will appear in your ad with the "www." prefix. If your website address begins with a subdomain, your display URL will appear with the subdomain, like "support.google.com." 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). 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.
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. Look at the clickthrough rates (CTRs) shown in your account statistics to understand the percentage of times a user clicks your ad. 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 get an idea of how your CTR compares to other advertisers, visit the "Analyze competition" page on the Opportunities tab. 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.
Actual cost-per-click (CPC)
Your maximum cost-per-click (max CPC) bid is the most you'll typically be charged for a click, but you'll often be charged less -- sometimes much less. That final amount you're charged for a click is called your actual CPC. Actual CPC is often less than max CPC because with the AdWords auction, the most you'll pay is what's needed to rank higher than the ad position immediately below yours. To understand how this works, it's important to understand the concepts of Quality Score and Ad Rank. Your Quality Score is a measure of how relevant and useful your ad and landing page are to the people who see it. It's based on your click-through rates and other factors. We combine your Quality Score with the CPC bid for an auction to determine something called Ad Rank. Each advertiser's Ad Rank is then used to determine where the ad appears (or whether it appears at all). If the advertiser immediately below you bids US$2.00, and if that advertiser's ad is the same quality as yours, you'd typically need to bid a penny more than US$2.00 to rank higher than that advertiser. With AdWords, that's the most you'll pay (about US$2.01), whether your bid is US$3.00, US$5.00 or more, unless your campaign targets interest categories on the Display Network. If the advertiser immediately below you bids US$2.00 and has a higher quality ad than you, you'll pay about a penny more than what's required to match that advertiser's higher Ad Rank, but never more than your maximum CPC bid (unless you're setting bid adjustments or using Enhanced CPC). Note that the minimum Ad Rank required for ads above search results is generally greater than the minimum Ad Rank required for ads beside search results. As a result, the cost-per-click (CPC) when you appear above search results could be higher than the CPC if you appear beside search results, even if no other advertisers are immediately below you. Although you may pay more per click, top ads usually have higher click-through rates and give you access to certain ad extensions (like sitelinks) and other features available only in top ad positions. As always, you're never charged more than your max CPC bid. For certain ads on the Google Display Network, you may pay more or less than the exact amount required to rank higher than the advertiser immediately below you. Learn more about the Display Network ad auction.
Auction
he process that happens with each Google search to decide which ads will appear for that specific search and in which order those ads will show on the page. Each time an AdWords ad is eligible to appear for a search, it goes through the ad auction. The auction determines whether or not the ad actually shows and in which ad position it will show on the page. Here's how the auction works: When someone searches, the AdWords system finds all ads whose keywords match that search. From those ads, the system ignores any that aren't eligible, like ads that target a different country or are disapproved. Of the remaining ads, those with sufficient Quality Scores and bids may show, ordered on the page based on their Ad Rank (a combination of Quality Score and bid amount). The most important thing to remember is that even if your competition bids higher than you, you can still win a higher position -- at a lower price -- with highly relevant keywords and ads. Since the auction process is repeated for every search on Google, each auction can have potentially different results depending on the competition at that moment. Therefore it's normal for you to see some fluctuation in your ad's position on the page and in whether or not your ad shows at all.