Google marketing, in plain English
Every term below is one I've had to explain on a call, usually because someone was quoted for it without being told what it was.
Each entry gives you the definition in a sentence, then what it actually means for your money.
I'm Chris Lourenco and I run Loudachris in Adelaide, so these are written the way I'd explain them sitting across from you.
Google Ads
10 terms
Quality Score
Quality Score is Google's 1 to 10 rating of how relevant your keyword, your ad and your landing page are to what someone actually typed.
Cost per click (CPC)
Cost per click is what you pay Google each time someone clicks your ad.
Cost per lead (CPL)
Cost per lead is your total ad spend divided by the number of genuine enquiries it produced.
Conversion tracking
Conversion tracking is the code that tells Google which clicks turned into enquiries, so it can bid toward the ones that do.
Negative keywords
Negative keywords are the searches you tell Google to keep your ads out of.
Keyword match types
Match types control how loosely Google is allowed to interpret your keyword when deciding which searches to show your ad for.
Search terms report
The search terms report shows the actual phrases people typed before your ad appeared, as opposed to the keywords you bid on.
Performance Max (PMax)
Performance Max is a Google campaign type that spends 1 budget across Search, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, Display and Discover, choosing the mix itself.
Smart bidding
Smart bidding is Google setting your bid for every individual auction using its own prediction of whether that click will convert.
Impression share
Impression share is the percentage of the times you were eligible to appear that you actually appeared.
SEO
12 terms
Local pack (map pack)
The local pack is the block of 3 business listings with a map that Google shows for searches with local intent.
Google Business Profile (GBP)
Your Google Business Profile is the free listing that puts your business in Google Maps and in the local pack.
Backlink
A backlink is a link from another website to yours.
Domain Rating and Domain Authority
Domain Rating and Domain Authority are 0 to 100 scores invented by SEO tool companies to estimate how strong a site's link profile is.
Core Web Vitals
Core Web Vitals are 3 Google measurements of how a page feels to use: how fast the main content appears, how quickly it responds, and how much it jumps around while loading.
Canonical tag
A canonical tag is a line in a page's code telling Google which version of a page is the real one when several URLs show the same content.
Crawled, currently not indexed
"Crawled, currently not indexed" is Google Search Console telling you it read your page and chose not to include it in the index.
Search intent
Search intent is what someone is actually trying to do when they type a search, as opposed to the words they used.
Schema markup (structured data)
Schema markup is hidden code on a page that states plainly what the page is about, in a format search engines read directly.
Title tag
The title tag is the headline of your page as it appears in Google's results and in the browser tab.
Internal linking
Internal linking is how the pages on your own site link to each other.
Keyword cannibalisation
Keyword cannibalisation is when several pages on your own site target the same search and end up competing with each other.
AI search
5 terms
AI Overview
An AI Overview is the AI-written answer Google places at the top of the results page, above the normal links.
AI Mode
AI Mode is Google's fully conversational search, where the whole results page is an AI answer you can ask follow-up questions of.
Zero-click search
A zero-click search is one where the person gets what they needed on the results page and never visits a website.
llms.txt
llms.txt is a proposed file you place on your site to tell AI models how to read it, and there is no evidence any of them do.
Answer engine citation
An answer engine citation is ChatGPT, Google's AI Overviews, Gemini, Perplexity or Copilot quoting your site as a source in an answer.
Measurement
6 terms
Click-through rate (CTR)
Click-through rate is the share of people who clicked after seeing you, calculated as clicks divided by impressions.
Bounce rate and engagement rate
Bounce rate was the share of visits where someone viewed 1 page and left, and Google Analytics 4 replaced it with engagement rate.
GA4 key event (formerly conversion)
A key event is an action in Google Analytics 4 that you've marked as mattering, such as a form submission or a phone tap.
Landing page
A landing page is the page someone arrives on, and in advertising it usually means a page built for 1 specific campaign.
Noindex
Noindex is an instruction in a page's code telling search engines to leave that page out of their results.
Server-side rendering (SSR)
Server-side rendering means the server sends a complete HTML page, rather than sending a near-empty page that JavaScript fills in once it loads in the browser.
Something here you were quoted for?
Send it over and I'll tell you plainly whether it's worth paying for on your site.
Ask me about it