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Glossary: PPC Keywords
Glossary: PPC Keywords

What does this mean? We cover the definitions of sections and headers on the page.

Sidra Condron avatar
Written by Sidra Condron
Updated over a week ago

New Keywords (Dropdown Sort): This sort shows only keywords that the advertiser is buying for the first time.

Most Successful Keywords (Dropdown Sort): This includes all of the domain's paid keywords that we've seen over the past year, sorted in order of their most highly-searched, relevant keywords.

FILTERS AND COLUMNS

Total Keywords/Total Volume: These metrics shown at the top of the keyword list will update every time you filter the keywords or change your segment. It shows the keyword count of the keywords currently being displayed. Total Volume is an estimation of how many searches are being done for all of these keywords combined.

Hide Your Site's Paid Keywords: As you look for new keywords ideas, type in your own domain here to remove any terms that you already buy. This works best when your search starts with a domain that is NOT your own.

Keywords Include/Exclude

This serves two purposes. The include filter requires that what you type appears in the results. That helps you narrow the results to specific topics. The exclude filter helps you avoid branded terms you don't want to bid on or products/categories you don't offer.

Include: This filter lets you narrow your results to keywords that have specific words or phrasing in them. That way you can zero in on a niche without limiting your initial search up front. If you search “pc reviews” you can include “vs” to get comparison ideas.

Exclude: This filter lets you take out results that you don’t want to consider. It’s helpful if some of them don’t match what you offer. For example, search “online tax return software,” but exclude the word “free.”

Volume: This shows the number of searches done this past month across the US on Google.com (or in the UK on Google.co.uk if you are looking at UK data). We blend data from multiple sources to give a better snapshot of search activity on this keyword, so it won’t be identical to Google’s metrics for search volume.

Cost per Click (CPC): The average amount advertisers pay Google anytime someone clicks their own ad for this keyword. The default is “broad match” costs, but exact match and phrase match are available.

You can find more information on Google's match types here.

Ads: This is the total number of advertisers we've seen over the last 6 months for this keyword. It's helpful to know how competitive the field is and how many advertisers have tested this keyword over time.

Ad Copy (Icon): When you hover, it shows the most recently captured ad copy that the domain ran on this keyword.

Mobile Searches (Percent): When we have a breakdown of how many of the searches for this keyword come from mobile vs desktop, we will show it here.

Paid Clicks (Percent) Of all clicks made to this keyword's SERP, this percentage measures how many went to the paid ads.

Monthly Cost: Our estimate of what an advertiser would spend, on average, to advertise on this keyword each month.

Keyword Difficulty/Ranking Difficulty: We’ve calculated how difficult it would be to rank on this keyword. The score is based on a scale of 0-100 (with 100 being the most difficult to rank for). Compare this number to other keywords you're targeting to get an idea of how to prioritize your SEO campaign.

Keyword difficulty takes into account the strength of the domains, on-page signals like “keyword in title,” and the number of .gov and .edu domains.

Clicks: This is the total monthly clicks made to the SERP for this keyword. It includes organic and paid clicks combined.

Desktop Searches (Percent): When we have a breakdown of how many of the searches for this keyword come from desktop vs mobile, we will show it here.

Advertising on higher desktop-search keywords could have different results on research-driven terms like "SAT prep" or "antivirus software."

Searches Not Clicked (Percent): Some SERPs return enough information that the user does not have to click any results. There might also be unexpected results that cause the user to abandon the SERP without any clicks. This is the rate that searchers leave the page without clicking any result.

Organic Clicks (Percent): Of all clicks made to this keyword's SERP, this percentage measures how many went to organic results.

Adult Filters: If we detect any potentially NSFW search terms, we hide them by default and keep them out of the roll-up metrics. You have options to include, exclude, or view them alone in your results.

Cost Selections: You can change the metrics displayed on this page from the default of "broad match" to exact or phrase match.

CPC Selections: The CPC metric is calculated off of broad match metrics, but you can change the metrics displayed on this page from the default of "broad match" to exact or phrase match.

**Differences in the Export Page**

Export pages are usually spreadsheets that cannot rely on icons and charts in the same way that our live pages can. A chart that you see on the live page might appear as a number in the export. Or, we include some notations that are used for sorting purposes on the live page. Because of that, we list any significant differences below.

Is Question?: This TRUE/FALSE notation is used behind the scenes so that we can display the right entries in the "Questions" segment.

Is not Safe for Work? This TRUE/FALSE notation is used behind the scenes to help us show the "Adult Filter" results.

SERP Features CSV: This lists any special features we saw when we collected the SERP. Sometimes these SERP features might push ads aside or affect how they are clicked.

SERP First Result: This is the top-ranked page for this keyword's search results. You can see patterns if one piece of content dominates a category across similar keywords in this list.

Current SERP: This lists the advertisers on the page when we last pulled the SERP results.

Number of Ranking Homepages: This is the number of homepages (from any domain) that rank within the first 50 results for this keyword.

A homepage might be “https://webmd.com” vs a longer path like “https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise.”


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