Google Ads Fundamentals
What you are paying for, how the auction decides who shows up and the campaign types that matter for most businesses.
- Pricing
- Pay per click for search and Shopping, per view or impression for video
- Main campaign types
- Search, Shopping, Performance Max, YouTube, Local Services Ads
- Key quality factor
- Relevance of keywords, ads and landing pages
- Where to manage
- ads.google.com
On This Page
Paying for Attention
Google Ads places your business in front of people who are searching for something or watching and browsing on Google's properties. In the most common case, search ads, you pay only when someone clicks. That click sends a person with a stated need straight to your website or phone.
The Auction
Each search triggers an auction among advertisers who chose related keywords. Google ranks ads by a combination of the bid and a quality estimate that reflects how relevant the ad and landing page are to the search. A relevant ad can win a higher position than a competitor paying more, and it usually pays less per click. This is why account structure and landing pages matter as much as budget.
The Campaign Types
Search campaigns show text ads on search results and are the best fit for services people look for by name. Shopping campaigns show product listings with images and prices for online stores. Performance Max campaigns use automation to place ads across search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps and the display network from a single campaign. YouTube campaigns run video ads. Local Services Ads are a separate program for home service and professional businesses that charges per lead rather than per click.
A Healthy Account
A healthy account has campaigns organized around the services you sell, ads that say what the searcher wants to hear, conversion tracking that records calls and forms, and a weekly habit of removing searches that waste money. Most accounts that underperform fail on one of these four.
Putting This to Work
If your account has never had a search term review, that is the first place to look. Most wasted spend is hiding in searches you never meant to pay for.
In Practice
A roofing company bidding on roof replacement pays $18 per click. A competitor with a vaguer ad and a homepage landing page pays $26 for the same searches and ranks below them.
Sources
- Google Ads Help support.google.com
- Think with Google, search insights www.thinkwithgoogle.com
- Search Engine Land, Google Ads coverage searchengineland.com
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