Every bit of jargon, translated

Autopilot

Lets the optimizer apply only reversible changes that reduce spend — pausing waste and adding negative keywords. Anything that raises spend still waits for you.

Blackout window

Dates when all automated changes are frozen — useful during a sale, a launch, or a reporting period you don't want disturbed.

Brand terms

Words that mean your own company. Anything matching them is never paused or bid down automatically, because brand traffic is usually your cheapest.

Change request

A proposed edit to your Google Ads account. Nothing reaches Google until it's approved and applied, and the previous value is saved so it can be reverted.

Click-through rate

The share of people who clicked after seeing your ad. Low CTR usually means the ad or the keyword doesn't match what the person was actually searching for.

Clicks

How many times someone clicked your ad through to your site.

Confidence

How strongly the data supports acting, based mostly on sample size. Findings below the bar are shown to you but never acted on automatically.

Conversion value

The revenue you've attributed to those conversions. Only meaningful if you send values back to Google Ads.

Conversions

Actions you count as success — a form filled in, a call, a purchase. You choose which ones count in your Google Ads conversion settings.

Cost per acquisition

What you pay, on average, for one conversion. Total spend divided by conversions. Lower is better — this is the number most accounts live or die by.

Cost per click

What you pay each time someone clicks your ad.

Daily budget

What a campaign may spend per day on average. Google can overspend on a busy day and make it back on a quiet one, but won't exceed the monthly equivalent.

Dry run

Runs the full analysis and shows exactly what it would change, without touching your Google Ads account. Safe to run any time.

Guardrails

Safety limits that hold changes back — protecting brand campaigns, capping how many changes happen per day, and waiting after a recent change so results can settle.

Impression share lost to budget

How often you were eligible to show but your daily budget had already run out. High numbers here on a profitable campaign are usually the cheapest growth available.

Impression share lost to rank

How often you were beaten to the auction on bid or ad quality rather than budget. Fixed with better bids, better ads, or better landing pages — not more budget.

Impressions

How many times your ad was shown.

Match type

How loosely Google may match a search to your keyword. Exact is tightest, broad is loosest and picks up the most irrelevant traffic.

Maximum CPC bid

The ceiling on what you'll pay for a single click on this keyword. You'll often pay less than the ceiling.

Negative keyword

A term you never want to show for. Adding one stops future spend on that search without touching anything else — one of the safest changes available.

Optimization mode

How much the optimizer may do on its own: nothing, propose changes for your approval, or apply the safest ones automatically.

Performance Max

A Google campaign type that runs across Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps from one set of assets, with Google choosing placements automatically.

Quality Score

Google's 1–10 rating of how relevant your keyword, ad, and landing page are to each other. Higher scores lower what you pay per click.

Responsive search ad

An ad where you supply several headlines and descriptions and Google assembles the combinations. Most ad groups should run at least two.

Return on ad spend

Revenue earned for every dollar spent. 4x means $4 back for every $1 in. Use this instead of CPA when you track order value, like e-commerce.

Rule

One named check the optimizer runs, like 'search terms spending with no conversions'. Each one is measured against your account so rules that don't work here lose influence.

Search impression share

The share of the searches you were eligible for where your ad actually appeared. 45% means you missed more than half the auctions you could have entered.

Search term

What a person actually typed into Google, as opposed to the keyword you bid on. The gap between the two is where most wasted spend hides.

Target CPA

The most you're willing to pay for one conversion. Set this in Account Strategy — it's what lets the optimizer tell a good result from a bad one in your account.

29 terms. Inside the product, each of these appears as a tooltip next to the number it describes — so you never have to remember any of it.