What is Google Ads and How Does It Work?

Here, we'll talk about Google Ads, which used to be called Google AdWords. It's Google's own advertising service that lets you pay to have search results for your website show up on a SERP (search engine results page).

You don't have to wait for your new site to naturally move up the rankings. When you use paid search, you can see results right away, and it's not as hard or expensive to use as you might think.

Pay-per-click

We call advertising in a search engine's list of results "paid search." These are usually at the top or on the side of a SERP, and they look more and more like organic results. Right now, Google gives them a small green "Ad" label.

You can do this on more than just Google. Bing has its own advertising network called The Bing Network.

In our beginner's guide to paid search, "What is paid search (PPC) and why do you need it?" you can learn more about paid search and the different ways to do it.

But for the sake of this article, we'll focus on Google Ads. Let's find out how it works.

Also read: Six Google Ads Metrics That Deserve Your Time More Than “Average Position”

How Google Ads work, in a nutshell

In a nutshell, you choose some keywords that someone might use to search on Google and then make an ad based on those keywords that will show up on the SERP.

Of course, you probably won't be the only business that wants to show ads to people who search for those terms. The same search term can be bid on by more than one company.

Of course, you probably won't be the only business that wants to show ads to people who search for those terms. The same search term can be bid on by more than one company.

If you want your ad to show up at all, you have to bid against other marketers on how much you're willing to pay Google Ads every time a searcher clicks on your ad.

The more likely your ad will show up in the search results, the more you pay per click (which is why paid search is often referred to as PPC, which stands for Pay-Per-Click).

But, and this is a big but, unlike other real-time bidding models, the highest bid is not the only thing that is considered. Google will give your ad something called a "Ad Rank" that will decide where it shows up on the SERP and if it shows up at all.

What is Rank Ad?

Google uses a number called "Ad Rank" to decide the order in which paid search ads to show up on the SERP. Per Google Ads Help:

"In general, the ad with the highest Ad Rank gets to be shown first, the ad with the second-highest Ad Rank gets to be shown second, and so on, as long as the ads pass the relevant thresholds."

Also read: How to Use Google Ads Optimization Score to Make Better Ads

Ad Rank is based on five things, one of which is how much you bid. Among other things:

How well your ads and landing page are made (reflected in your Quality Score)The Ad Rank thresholds are a set of quality standards that your ad must meet to be shown. These can be affected by things like the subject and nature of a search, its location, and the type of device being used.Search context includes the query, the time of the search, the other ads and search results that show up on the page, and other user signals like location and device type.Ad extensions and other ad formats are the extra pieces of information you can add, like a phone number or more links to other pages on your website.

Bidding

You pay Google Ads every time someone clicks on your ad. Cost-per-click is the price you're willing to pay for each click (CPC).

You can set a maximum bid amount, and if you choose the automatic option, Google chooses the bid amount for you within your budget. This should get you the most clicks possible within your budget.

Cost per impression is another option that isn't used as often (CPM). Here, you pay the search engine every time your ad shows up 1,000 times on the SERP. There's no need for the user to click through.

You can choose either of the two options.

When someone types a search term into Google, it takes that long for Google Ads to look at all the relevant advertisers bidding for that search term, decide if there will be an auction, hold that auction, figure out which ad offers the best combination of highest maximum bid and quality score, and then serve that ad on the results page.

That's roughly 0.26 seconds.

Other options besides Google Ads

The Bing Network used to be called the Yahoo Bing Network. It is the ad network for Bing, which is the biggest competitor to Google's search engine. The Network is made up of a number of partners that work together. These partners include AOL, the Wall Street Journal, and Gumtree.

According to data from Bing Ads, the Bing Network has a 33.9% market share in the US and a 24.7% market share in the UK. This means that it reaches a sizeable number of searchers that Google Ads may not be able to reach.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a term for all the ways, tactics, and processes you can use to make it more likely that your website will show up and rank well in the organic (not paid) search engine results. If you do excellent SEO, you might not even need paid search. But many marketers will say that both are important for search marketing and that they work well together.

You may have seen a carousel of sponsored shopping results at the top of the page as an example of Google Shopping.

You can send listings like this to Google Ads by making Product Listing Ads (PLA) with relevant information, rich images, prices, and the name of your store.

If you want to learn google ads then you can learn from Idia's best google ads tutorial for beginners