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Acronyms & Terminology


Ultimate Guide to Paid Search Acronyms & Terminology


Whether you’re new to the game or a seasoned account manager, PPC terms and
acronyms can be difficult to digest at times. The sheer volume of terms,
acronyms and technicality is enough to make even the boldest of individuals
cry.

The folks here at PPC Hero believe it is important to provide our readers
with as much information possible, so we’ve decided to compile a comprehensive
list of paid search acronyms and terminology associated with this ever-changing
industry. This way, none of our readers have an excuse to feel out of the
loop!


Ad Delivery –
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, especially if your campaigns are limited by budget.


Ad Extensions –
Additional
incentives
that increase the likelihood that users will
click your ads. Advertisers can include business addresses and phone numbers,
additional site links, or specific product information.


Ad Group –
A set of keywords, ads, and bids that is a key part of how
your account is organized. Each campaign is made up of one or more
ad groups
, while each ad group typically includes about 5-10
keywords.


Ad Position –
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.
Position one doesn’t mean that you are on top of the organic results
necessarily.
You can be in position one while appearing on the side of the
results.


Ad Rank –
Not to be confused with Ad Position,
Ad Rank
is a value that’s used to determine your ad position
behind-the-scenes. This is calculated as the product of your bid and Quality
Score.


Ad Rotation –
A preference that determines which ad in your ad group
should show when you have multiple ads active. Rotation settings include
Optimize for Clicks, Optimize for Conversions, Rotate Evenly
(90 days) and Rotate Indefinitely.
This setting is important to
check to ensure that you have a proper balance between testing of your messaging
and performance of your account.


Ad Scheduling –
Setting that allows you to control and specify which
hours and days you want your ads to appear, targeting periods of time when you
expect your ads to be more successful. It can also be used to automatically
adjust bids during specific
time periods
(which is also known as dayparting).


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. Common
ad statuses
include Under Review, Eligible,
Approved and more.


AdSense –
A Google-based
product
that compensates website owners for showing relevant
Display Network ads on their site.


Advertising Policies –
Strongly suggested guidelines for your ads,
keywords, and website. Ads that violate policies won’t be able to run.


AdWords Campaign Experiments (ACE) –
Allows users to test changes to
their account on a portion of the auctions that your ads participate in. ACEs
can be set up to test new keywords, bids, placements and more. Users can also
choose how much of the traffic they want to test and even discard the experiment
at any point. If the
experiment
is discarded, your changes will automatically
revert to the way they were before the test.


AdWords Editor –
A free software
application
by Google that allows you to make changes to
your account in bulk. This allows users to add new campaigns/ad groups/keywords,
make bid changes and more.


AdWords Labels –
These allow advertisers to organize elements within
their accounts into meaningful groups for faster and easier reporting.
Labels

can be applied to keywords, campaigns, ad groups, and ads.


Analytics Content Experiments –
Formerly known as Website Optimizer
(standalone), this tool is built into the Analytics platform and allows users to
setup A/B or multivariate tests for their landing pages to see how those changes
affect user behavior. This
tool
can be a great way to make incremental improvements to
conversion rates.


Application Program Interface (API) –
An application that interacts
directly with one or more external servers.


Audiences –
In PPC,
audiences
are used to define the customers you target with
your PPC ads. An audience can also refer to a group of users that have visited
one or more pages of a website or completed a specific action. After this
happens, they are included on lists that can be used to enhance your Display
Network and Remarketing efforts. Advertisers can also create custom
combinations, which can be a good way to target more specific audiences.
Audiences used to define the customers you target with your PPC ads.


Automated Rules –
A feature that automatically adjusts your ad
statuses, budgets, and bids, so you don’t have to spend so much time manually
monitoring your campaigns. The cool part about
automated rules
is that you can customize and fine-tune them
to your individual account goals/KPIs.


Automatic Bidding –
Automatic
bidding
allows you to put your bidding on autopilot with the
goal of getting the most possible clicks within your budget. You can also set a
CPC bid limit if you don’t want to exceed a particular price for each
click.


Automatic Placements –
Locations or
domains
on the Display Network where your ads can show,
which are automatically matched to your keywords and/or other targeting
methods.


Auto Tagging –
A feature in AdWords that automatically appends a
custom code to your destination URLs to help you track your ad performance using
website
tracking
programs like Google Analytics.


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.


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


Bid –
The maximum amount you are willing to
pay
for a search keyword click.


Bidding Types –
There are several ways to bid on your keywords,
depending on what matters most to you and your business. There are three main
bidding types
available: focus on clicks (CPC),
impressions (CPM), or conversions (CPA).


Bing Ads –
Formerly known as adCenter,
Bing Ads
is a service that provides
pay-per-click
advertising on Bing
and
Yahoo! search properties.


Bing Ads Editor –
A free desktop
tool
designed to help you manage your account offline and
easily make changes in bulk. As it stands currently, this is only available for
Windows OS applications.


Bing Campaign Analytics –
The
Campaign Analytics
tool helps you track whether or not your
ads are achieving your desired goals. You might also think of this as Bing’s
version of Google Analytics.


Bidding Software –
As the title indicates, this type of software is
primarily used for the automatic controlling of bids. However,
bidding software
is also helpful for consolidating multiple
advertising channels in one place, as well as providing the ability create
high-level rules and algorithms to help optimize large PPC accounts.


Bounce Rate –
Percent of people who enter your site but
leave
without visiting any other page.


Broad Match –
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.


Broad Match Modifier (BMM) –
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.


Daily Budget –
An amount set for each ad campaign to specify how
much, on average, you’d like to spend each day. However, it is important to know
that on any single day, you can receive up to 20% more in costs than your
daily budget
.


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


Campaign –
A set of ad groups (ads, keywords, and bids) that share a
budget, location targeting, and other settings. Your AdWords account can have
one or many ad
campaigns
running.


Change History –
A tool that lists the changes you’ve made to your
account during the past two years. See
details
about changes like bid adjustments, status changes,
keyword additions and more. This is particularly helpful because you can filter
changes based on a specific date or date range.


Clicks –
In PPC, a click is registered when someone clicks on one of
your Search or Display Network ads.


Click-Through Rate (CTR) –
A way of measuring the success of an
online advertising campaign.
CTR
is determined by dividing the number of users who
clicked on an ad by the number of impressions.


Click-to-Call –
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.


Client ID –
Known as an XID in Bing Ads, a Client ID is a 10-digit
string of numbers that help distinguish one account from another in the Google
system.


Contextual Targeting –
Targeting
feature
that matches your ads to other relevant sites on the
Display Network using your keywords and/or topics.


Conversion -
A desired action taken by a website visitor, such as
filling out a form or making a purchase. Search engines track visitors for up to
30 days, so your
conversion
may not happen until a subsequent visit several
days later.


Conversion Optimizer –
Also known as
CPA bidding
, this is a feature that uses historical
conversion data to predict which clicks are likely to be valuable, then changes
your bids to help you maximize conversions.


Conversion Rate –
Conversions divided by clicks, which represent the

rate
at which a click on your ad resulted in a conversion or
desired action.


Cookies –
Not to be confused with snack-food, this is a small
file
saved on people’s computers to help store preferences
and other information regarding previous search history.
Engines use these
to track conversions and build audiences for remarketing lists.


Cost-Per-Click (CPC) –
The amount of money an advertiser pays search
engines and other Internet publishers for a single click on its advertisement
that brings one visitor to its website.


Cost-Per-Lead (CPL) –
Also referred to as Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA),
this refers to the
amount
of money an advertiser pays search engines and other
internet publishers for a lead generated on its advertisement.


Cost-Per-Phone Call (CPP) –
Maximum amount you’re willing to pay for
a
phone
call. This feature will only work when using call
extensions and a Google forwarding number with your ad.


Cost-Per-Thousand (CPM) –
Pricing means advertisers pay their maximum
bid amount for every one
thousand
impressions received.
This option is only
available on the display network.


Cost-Per-View (CPV) –
Used with TrueView video campaigns, this is a
bidding option that allows users to pay each time your video is played.



Data Filters –
A feature that allows users to select,
sort
and view only the information that is most important to
them. This oftentimes makes large quantities of data become easier to
digest.


Day Parting –
Optimization technique where you adjust your ads to run
during the most profitable hours and/or days. For example, if you run a call
center that operates from 8-5, you can
schedule
ads to run during that timespan only.


Default Max. CPC –
Set at the ad group level, this represents the
maximum amount you’re willing to pay for each ad click. If you don’t set a
specific keyword bid, AdWords will apply your default max. CPC bid.


Destination URL –
The URL address for the page you’re sending traffic
to from your PPC ads.
This is allowed to be different from the display
URL, although it has to direct users to the same domain as what is in the
display URL.


Devices –
Electronics that are capable of displaying a PPC ad.
Supported
devices
include desktops/laptops, mobile devices and
tablets.


Dimensions Tab –
Reporting
section
in AdWords that allows advertisers to segment and
view data based on a variety of criteria. For example, you can view aggregate
data by destination URL, geographic location, hour of day, day of week and
more.


Display Campaign Optimizer (DCO) –
Tool that increases conversions by
automatically managing, targeting and bidding for campaigns on the Google
Display Network. Simply set a CPA target and AdWords will do the rest. However,
you must have enough historical conversion data in order to opt into this
feature
.


Display/Content Bid –
The maximum amount you’re willing to pay for an
ad click on the Display Network.


Display/Content Network –
A collection of more than a million
websites
, videos, and apps where your ads can appear.

Google’s network is called the Display Network, while Bing’s network of sites is
called the Content Network.
In a lot of PPC circles, the terms are used
interchangeably.


Display URL –
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.


Dynamic Ad Targeting –
Targeting method that matches relevant
searches with
ads
generated directly from your website automatically.



Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) –
Feature that allows users to
dynamically
customize
an ad to include keywords contained in user search
queries.


Editorial Review –
Policies that govern the content and forms of
advertising accepted by the search engines. Every time you create a new
ad/keyword/etc, it will be submitted for editorial review to ensure guidelines
are met.


Embedded Negatives –
Strategy that allows advertisers to show for
every variation of a keyword,
except
for the keyword itself. This is a great way to help
avoid cross-contamination of campaigns/ad groups housing similar or closely
related terms along with ad groups that house different match types.


Enhanced CPC (ECPC) –
Automatic bid management
feature
designed to increase your ROI by raising or lowering
your bids for keywords that the system predicts are more likely to convert.



Exact Match –
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.


Facebook Ads –
Online social advertising
channel
with over 1 billion people. Due to an abundance of
demographic data,
Facebook
has become a valuable asset to many PPC
marketers.


Facebook Exchange (FBX) –
Advertising program that targets users who
visit a site (other than Facebook) and spend some time looking at a product, but
don’t make the final purchase. With
FBX
, that third-party site will now be able to follow you to
Facebook and target you there with a highly specialized ad. Think of it as
Remarketing to Facebook’s colossal user database.


Free Clicks –
Clicks that aren’t billed, such as actions taken on an
interactive ads. For example, an expandable image as part of the ad format will
result in “free clicks” when that interaction occurs.


Frequency Capping –
Feature that enables advertisers to create a
threshold for the number of times your ads
appear
to the same person on the Display Network.


Geotargeting –
Also known as
Location Targeting
, this campaign setting allows advertisers
to specify the geographical countries, regions, states, etc. where their ads
will be served.


Google AdWords –
Online advertising
platform
that offers
pay-per-click advertising and
site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads and more.



Google Analytics –
Free website optimization service and
interface
that provides detailed statistics regarding visits
to your site and behavioral analysis.


Google Checkout –
Google Checkout is a
service
that makes buying and selling across the web fast,
convenient, and secure. When you utilize Google Checkout an icon will be
displayed within your pay-per-click ad and this can build trust with users and
increase your click-through rate.


Google Forwarding Number –
A unique
phone number
generated through Google that advertisers can
use in their ads to help track business calls and performance.


Google Merchant Center –
A
tool
that helps advertisers upload product listings and
feeds to be used for Google Shopping, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce
Search.


Image Ads –
Formatted for the Google Display Network, these are
ads
that include graphics to help promote your business. Ads
of this type support a variety of sizes and formats, such as static, animated or
flash.


Impressions –
Number of people who see your PPC ad.


Impression Share –
Impression share (IS) is the number of impressions
you’ve received divided by the estimated number of
impressions
you were eligible to receive. Eligibility is
based on your current ads’ targeting settings, approval statuses, bids, and
Quality Scores. Data is available at the campaign and ad group levels.


Interest Categories –
Allows you to reach people based on their
interests as they browse pages across the Google Display Network. You can select
from a wide-ranging list of these
categories
— from autos and sports to travel and fashion —
and Google will show ads to people who we think are interested in those
categories.


Invalid Clicks –
Also known as
Click Fraud
, these are clicks on ads that Google considers
to be illegitimate, such as unintentional clicks or clicks resulting from
malicious software.


Key Performance Indicator (KPI) –
Performance measurement that stems
from your primary metric or what is most important to a particular business’s
success. For example, conversions and cost-per-acquisition can be popular
KPIs
for many PPC advertisers.


Keyword –
A
word
or phrase that PPC advertisers use to target and
display their ads in the sponsored search results.


Keyword Matching Options –
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.


Keyword Tool –
Found in the AdWords interface, this tool helps
advertisers find new
keyword ideas
and add them to your account. This can also be
used to estimate traffic volume, identify negative keywords and determine
competition level as well.


Landing Page –
Specified by the destination URL, this is the
webpage
where customers end up after they click your ad. It
is important to note that landing page quality is an important factor in
determining Quality Score.


Lead –
Desired action taken by customers, such as filling out a form,
submitting an email or downloading a whitepaper, etc. that allows marketers to
capture a user’s information for later use.


LinkedIN Ads –
A self-service advertising solution that allows
advertisers to place text
ads
on prominent pages across LinkedIn’s professional
network using robust targeting options and more.


Location Extensions –
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.


Long-tail Keyword –
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.


Managed Placements –
Placement targeting lets AdWords advertisers
choose
individual spots in the Google content network where
they’d like to see their ads displayed.
These are basically individual
sites that you want your ads to appear on.


Manual Bidding –
Default bidding option where CPC bids are set
manually for a particular keyword, placement, etc. Advertisers also have the
option to turn on Automatic Bidding if they don’t want to control their CPC bids
manually.


Manual Tagging –
As opposed to auto tagging, this option allows
advertisers to tag their destination URLs manually with “_utm” information that
can be read and understood by Analytics or 3rd party
tracking
solutions. These are also used heavily in email
blasts, promotional campaigns and more.


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


My Client Center (MCC) –
A powerful tool for handling multiple
AdWords accounts.
MCCs
are ideal for large advertisers with more than one
account.


Negative Keywords –
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.


Opportunities Tab –
Located in the AdWords interface, this is a tool
designed to help you get the most out of your PPC campaigns. Common
suggestions
include budget recommendations, potential
keyword additions and more.
These are all automated opportunities, so use
the opportunities tab with caution.


Pay-Per-Click (PPC) –
A method of advertising where the advertiser
pays for each click received through the search engines.


Pay-Per-Click Management –
Service provided by
certified agencies

or individuals that help businesses achieve their PPC goals and maximize
returns.


Phrase Match –
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.


Placement Exclusions –
Similar to a negative keyword, exclusions
prevent
your ads from appearing on individual websites or
categories of websites. These are designed to help increase relevancy and
control of ad placement on the Display Network.


Product Listing Ads (PLA) –
Search ads that include rich product
information, such as images, pricing, and business names, without requiring
additional keywords or ad text. Ads of this nature appear under the Google
Shopping results automatically for consumer queries relating to one of your
product
offerings.


Quality Score –
A complex and partially hidden formula
used by
search engines that takes CTR and several other factors into account in order to
decide whether your keywords are
relevant
to your ads and landing page.
This is
multiplied with your max CPC to calculate your Ad Rank to see what your ad
position will be.


Remarketing –
Allows advertisers to show ads to users who’ve
previously
visited
your website as they browse other sites on the
Display Network. This creates a network of high-intent and relevant users that
have the opportunity to click on your ad and return to your site to make a
purchase.


Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) –

Ratio
of money gained or lost on an investment relative to
the amount of advertising (PPC) money invested.


Return on Investment (ROI) –

Ratio
of money gained or lost on an investment relative to
the amount of money invested.


Search Engine Marketing (SEM) –
Form of
online
marketing
that involves the promotion of
web properties by increasing
their visibility in
search engine results pages and through paid online
advertisements like PPC.


Search Engine Optimization (SEO) –
Process of increasing organic
traffic from search engines results pages. All major search engines such as
Google,
Yahoo
and
Bing
have such results, where web pages
and other content are analyzed and ranked based on what the search engine
considers most relevant to the user.


Search Engine Results Page (SERP) –
The listings a user sees in the
search engines after typing in a search query. The
results
typically consist of a series of Organic listings
and Paid or sponsored search ads.


Search Network –
A
group
of search-related websites where your ads can appear,
including Google search sites and search partners.


Search Partners –
Websites
partnered
with Google to show PPC advertisements on the
Search Network.
They can be opted out of in the Google interface, but
advertisers don’t have the ability to bid exclusively on search partners.



Search Query –
A basic search query is what the user enters when
searching on any search engine.
If their search includes the keywords that
you are bidding on your ad will appear (depending on match types and all of the
other targeting options, of course).


Search Query Report (SQR) –
Also known as a “search terms report”,
this allows advertisers to review the actual
search queries
that triggered their PPC ads. This report is
great for identifying new profitable keyword ideas and blocking irrelevant
queries.


Shared Budgets –
AdWords
budgeting option
that allows advertisers to specify a
particular amount for a group of campaigns to spend in a given day. This can be
a good way to avoid spreading budget too thin, particularly in smaller
accounts.


Sitelinks Extensions –
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.


Social Extensions –
Type of AdWords
extension
that displays public brand endorsements (+1’s).
However, you must have a Google+ page to be considered eligible.


Text Ad –
The standard type of AdWords
ad
, which typically includes a headline (25 characters in
length), two lines of descriptive text (35 characters per line), and a display
and destination URL (the display URL is limited to 35 characters).


Text Placeholders –
Placeholder variables, such as {param2}
and {param3}, allow users to simultaneously update multiple ads in your
campaign all at once. One or more
placeholders
can be added to the ad title, ad text, display
URL, or destination URL of multiple ads.


Top vs. Side –
Refers to a paid ad’s placement on the SERPs. Ads can
appear at the top of the page or along the right-hand side of the page. This can
be helpful since an ad’s performance can oftentimes be affected by
position
.


Topics Targeting –
Targeting method that allows advertisers to show
ads on other websites around the Display Network that feature content related to
your selected
topics
.
Topics targeting is based on the content of
the websites and how Google classifies them.


Tracking Code –
Small snippet of HTML added to a “thank you” page
that shows what happens
after
a customer clicks on an ad and
enables the free conversion-
tracking
tool.


Traffic Estimator –
Free AdWords tool that predicts how well a
particular keyword could perform based on local and global search volume.
Advertisers can also use this
tool
to research average prices and ad positions as
well.


TrueView Video Ads –
Available in in-stream, in-slate, in-search
and/or in-display formats, these are
video ads
through AdWords that give viewers the choice over
which messages they want to see and when.


View-Through Conversion –
Provides a
measurement
of the number of online conversions that
happened within 30 days after a user saw a Google Display Network ad, didn’t
click on that ad, and then converted via another means.

As with most things these days, nothing is perfect, so feel free to let us
know if you see anything missing from our (hopefully) comprehensive list!

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