SEM Glossary

Campaign - An ad campaign on Google Ads made up of your ad groups, and has the same budget, campaign type and your other ad settings.

Ad Group - An ad group is your set of keywords, budgets and targeting methods for a particular objective, within the same campaign. You can have multiple ad groups in a campaign.

Keywords - Keywords are the words or word phrases you choose for your ads, and will help to determine where and when your ad will appear. 

Negative Keywords - Keywords that we do not want our ads to show up for, we mark as a negative.

Phrase Match - If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in "apartment near me" your ad would be eligible to appear when a user searches on the phrase apartment near me, in this order, and possibly with other terms before or after the phrase. For example, your ad could appear for the query new apartment near me but not for near me apartment, condos near me, or homes near me. Phrase match is more targeted than broad match, but more flexible than exact match.

Exact Match - Exact match keywords allow you to reach prospects searching only for the specific keyword you're bidding on or close variants of that keyword.

Quality Score - Quality score is the measurement from Google based on expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

A higher Quality Score can get you better ad placement and lower costs.

Impressions - An impression is the measurement of how many times your ad is shown.

Search Impression Share - The impression you received on the Search Network divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive.

Clicks - When someone physically clicks on an ad to land on your website.

Click Through Rate (CTR) - CTR measures how many people who have seen your ad and clicked through to your link destination.

Landing Page - Your landing page is the page on your website to which you’re driving traffic from your ad.

Daily Budget - Your daily budget is what you’re willing to spend per day per ad.  Your daily cost is based on a daily average per month, so don’t be alarmed if yours varies from day to day.

CPC - Cost-Per-Click - is the most common bid type on Google Ads. It means you pay every time a person actually clicks on your ad. You set your “maximum CPC” in the bidding process, which means that dollar amount is the most you’ll pay for a click on your ad.

Cost per Conversion - The ad costs divided by the conversions on a website. If you spend $100 and get 5 conversions, you have a $20 cost/conversion. Also called cost per lead