Terms are listed alphabetically. Where a term has its own full page, this entry gives the short version and links out.
Ad group
Google’s term for a group of ads that share the same customer profiles, keywords, and bids within a campaign. Equivalent to a Meta ad set. See ad set / ad group / variant naming conventions.
Ad group negative
A negative keyword applied to one ad group rather than to the whole campaign or account. The instrument that keeps two neighbouring themes out of each other’s auctions, because it blocks a term inside one theme without affecting anything else. Recorded in the boundaries section of the search theme brief.
Ad relevance
One of the three components of Quality Score. Google defines it as how closely an ad matches the intent behind a search. Google’s stated fix for a low rating is to organize keywords by theme and split ad groups holding mismatched keywords, which is the same test as the one-ad test.
Ad set
Meta’s term for a group of ads that share the same customer profile, budget, schedule, and placements within a campaign. Equivalent to a Google ad group. See ad set / ad group / variant naming conventions.
AI Overview
Google’s model-generated answer shown above the results list, assembled from a small number of sources it cites. One of the surfaces GEO is concerned with. See SEO and GEO concepts.
Angle
The reason a product matters to a particular person, stated as one proposition they could agree or disagree with. Sits above a hook, which is one execution of it, and below an angle type, which is the kind of argument it makes. Held in the angle library. See angle concepts.
Angle fatigue
An audience having heard an argument too many times, as opposed to having seen one execution too many times. New visuals on the same proposition do not recover it, which is what separates it from creative fatigue and makes it expensive to misdiagnose. See angle concepts.
Angle type
The kind of argument an angle makes: social proof, discount, urgency, problem, outcome, feature. A closed list, because a report has to group by it. Values and short forms live in the message angle dictionary.
Article brief
The fill-in workbook that defines what a single article has to answer, what new information it carries, who it is for, and how it is structured, before anyone writes it. Distinct from a copy brief, which governs ads, emails, and captions. See article brief and article brief concepts.
Asset register
The list of every approved brand file with its formats, location, owner, approved uses, and review date. It exists so nobody has to ask whether a file exists or whether they’re allowed to use it. See brand assets.
Authority area
A subject where a team can answer a question better than anyone else, on the basis of data others do not have, experience others have not accumulated, or a position others hedge on. Each authority area gets one hero article. See the article library overview.
Auto-applied recommendations
Platform settings that let the ad platform change a live campaign on its own: rewriting ad copy, adding keywords, or switching bid strategy, without anyone approving the change. Which are enabled is a media buyer’s decision; recording that decision in the platform brief is what keeps the briefed values and the running campaign matching.
Battle card
The one page a rep reads before a call where a named competitor is already in the deal: how that competitor positions themselves, where they genuinely win, where we win, the objections that come with them, and the questions that expose their limits. Distinct from competitor research, which is longer and read once. See the competitor battle card and battle card concepts.
Boilerplate
The 40 to 60 word third-person description of the company used on press releases, About pages, and directory listings. The longest item in the message set, and the one most often left to drift. See messaging.
Broad match
The match type that uses the most signals to read intent, matching queries related in meaning rather than in wording. Google’s current account structure guidance pairs it with themed ad groups and Smart Bidding. Which match types a theme runs on is the media buyer’s decision.
Campaign
The top-level container for ads in a platform account: it sets the objective, budget type, and funnel position that everything underneath it inherits. See campaign naming conventions.
Canonical URL
The address declared as the authoritative version of a page, so near-duplicate versions do not compete with each other. Usually the page itself. See article standards.
Chunk
A passage of a page that a retrieval system pulls out and works with on its own, rather than the whole page. Sections are the practical unit, which is why each one is written to answer its own heading. See SEO and GEO concepts.
Clear space
The protected empty area around a logo that nothing may enter: no text, no other marks, no page edge. Defined as a proportion of the logo itself, usually a letterform’s height, so one rule holds at every size. See logo usage.
Close variant
A query Google treats as equivalent to a keyword: misspellings, plurals, reordered words, and same-meaning phrasings. Close variants loosening over time is one of the reasons a single keyword ad group no longer receives a single query.
Co-branding
Placing the brand’s mark alongside a partner’s. Relative size and order are read as status whether or not that was intended, which is why the rules fix both. See logo usage.
Competitive displacement
Winning a deal from a competitor the buyer is already using or has already chosen, rather than from an evaluation with no incumbent. The reason a customer gave for switching is the most useful line on a battle card, because it is evidence rather than a claim. Recorded in the battle card library.
Competitive frame
The category a buyer mentally files a brand under, which decides what it gets compared against and on which attributes. Chosen rather than inherited. See positioning and brand strategy concepts.
Competitor tier
How much maintenance a competitor’s battle card earns, set by how often the competitor appears in deals. Tier 1 carries a full card and a quarterly review, Tier 2 a short card, and a watch entry carries a register row and no card. Values are defined in the battle card library.
Content decay
The gradual decline in traffic, rankings, and citations as an article’s facts age, the question shifts, or someone publishes something more current. It does not announce itself, which is why articles carry a scheduled review date. See the article maintenance process.
Contribution margin
What’s left from revenue after every cost that scales with an order, including advertising: cost of goods, shipping, fees, discounts, and ad spend. A common north star metric for ecommerce businesses, since it’s hard to improve by spending recklessly. See the ecommerce metrics starter pack.
Copy brief
The fill-in workbook that defines what a specific piece of writing needs to say and do, across whatever channel it runs on: email, SMS, paid social, search, or elsewhere. See copy brief and copy brief concepts. Use “copy briefs” only when referring to more than one.
Counter-metric
Watched alongside a north star metric to catch damage from optimizing too hard for it. Doesn’t need its own target, only visibility in the same report. See reporting framework concepts.
Creative brief
The fill-in workbook that defines what a piece of creative needs to say and do before production starts: objective, customer profile, offer, and format. See creative brief and the creative brief process. Use “creative briefs” only when referring to more than one, such as the creative brief library.
Creative diversity
The number of genuinely different arguments an account has in market at once, counted in propositions rather than in assets. The same angle running as a static, a video, and a carousel is one argument in three formats. See angle concepts.
Creator
The person who produces the creative work. This is the designer, art director, photographer, videographer, illustrator, copywriter, or other maker who takes the brief and turns it into the actual asset.
Customer profile
A defined segment of people an ad, campaign, or landing page is built for, described by shared traits, behavior, or list membership. Use “customer profile” for this concept everywhere, not “audience.” See customer profile brief, customer profile naming conventions, and the customer profile library.
Data dictionary
The fill-in document that defines a business’s metrics, formulas, sources of truth, and report registry. See the marketing reporting data dictionary. Not to be confused with a naming-convention dictionary, which is a table of approved identifier values rather than metric definitions.
Dictionary
The table of approved values for a naming identifier (for example, every valid objective or offer code), built once per category and reused in every name assembled from it. Each naming convention doc holds the dictionary for its level.
E-E-A-T
Experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust: the qualities Google’s rater guidelines describe for assessing content quality. Not a score in the ranking system, but a useful shorthand for why a named author with first-hand experience carries more weight than an anonymous post. See article brief.
Elevator pitch
The spoken 30-second version of the value proposition: customer, problem, solution, differentiation. One of the four lengths in the message set. See messaging.
Entity
A thing an engine recognizes as a distinct object with facts attached: a company, a person, a product, a place, a concept. Entity authority is built by describing the same entity consistently everywhere it appears, on your own site and on the profiles you control elsewhere. See SEO and GEO concepts.
Exact match
The match type that matches a keyword and its close variants. Narrower than phrase or broad, and no longer restricted to the exact words typed.
Expected clickthrough rate
One of the three components of Quality Score: how likely an ad is to be clicked when it is shown. Google’s guidance notes that an ad mentioning what the person searched for reads as more relevant than one that does not, which is why a theme records a phrase for its ads to carry.
Experiment ID
The short, structured identifier assigned to a test when its hypothesis is approved, appended to the names of everything that belongs to that test. See the experiment ID concepts and experiment ID workbook.
Flat file
The single spreadsheet holding every metric, for every channel and reporting period, stored as one row per period, channel, and metric rather than a wide table. Reports and dashboards are views generated from it. See the flat file template.
GEO
Generative engine optimization: the work of getting a page retrieved, trusted, and cited when a model writes the answer rather than listing links. Overlaps heavily with SEO on fundamentals, and diverges on structure, proof, and freshness. See SEO and GEO concepts and the GEO checklist.
Grain
What one row of data represents: an order, a week, a channel. Recorded per metric in the data dictionary so two people summing the same numbers get the same answer.
Guardrail metric
A metric watched during an experiment to catch damage that the primary metric would hide. Related to a counter-metric, which does the same job in ongoing reporting. See experiment brief.
Hero article
One of a capped set of at most 20 articles, one per authority area, that a team commits to keeping current indefinitely. Chosen by what we can answer better than anyone, not by search volume. Distinct from a supporting article. See the hero article register.
Hook
The opening line, subject, or first moment of a piece of copy, written to earn the reader’s attention before anything else gets read. One execution of an angle: the hook is what you swap when a creative tires, and the angle is what you keep. See copy brief concepts and angle concepts.
Intent statement
The one sentence in a search theme brief describing what every searcher in the theme is trying to do. Distinct from a topic: “gold” is a topic, “find today’s gold price” is an intent. Every later decision in the theme is checked against it.
Keyword cannibalization
Two of your own ad groups or campaigns competing for the same query, so Google chooses between your own ads and the conversion data for that query splits across both. The failure mode that theme boundaries exist to prevent.
KPI
Key performance indicator: a specific, named metric a campaign or test is measured against, defined once so everyone reports it the same way (for example, CPA or ROAS). “Metric” is the general word for any measured number; “KPI” is reserved for the metrics defined in KPI definitions.
Landing page experience
One of the three components of Quality Score: how relevant and useful the landing page is to someone who clicked. Google’s stated fix is to deliver content matching the search and keep messaging consistent from ad to landing page. See message match.
Landmine question
A question a rep asks the buyer that surfaces a competitor limitation in the buyer’s own words, before the competitor sets the evaluation criteria. It works because the buyer supplies the answer, which is harder to discount than a vendor stating the same thing. Written per competitor in the competitor battle card.
Lockup
A fixed, pre-approved combination of logo elements, such as the mark plus a tagline or a partner’s mark. Supplied as a single file and never rebuilt by hand. See logo usage.
Match type
The setting that controls how closely a query must relate to a keyword before it can trigger an ad. Exact, phrase, and broad. Match type policy for a campaign is set in the Google campaign brief; which types a specific keyword runs on is the media buyer’s call.
MER
Marketing efficiency ratio: total revenue divided by total marketing spend. A blended, business-level metric rather than a per-channel one, which is what lets it sidestep attribution disputes entirely. See the ecommerce metrics starter pack.
Message match
The continuity between the query, the ad, and the landing page. Not repeating the ad headline on the page word for word, but making the promise the ad made the first thing the page addresses. The search theme brief records the phrase both have to carry.
Message pillar
One of the small, capped set of supporting arguments beneath a value proposition, each with its own proof. Capped so the document keeps rejecting things. See messaging.
The summary shown under a page’s title in a results list, and sometimes reused by an answer engine as a ready-made summary. Not a ranking factor, but the sentence that decides a click. Written after the article exists, not before. See article standards.
MQL
Marketing qualified lead: a lead that meets an agreed scoring threshold for sales follow-up. The threshold should be agreed with sales in writing, not set by marketing alone. See the sales-led metrics starter pack and SQL.
Name jamming
Packing multiple identifiers into a name using their short form instead of their long form, to stay within a platform’s character limit. See naming conventions overview.
Naming convention
The rules that define how campaign, ad set/ad group, and ad names are built from a shared dictionary of identifiers, so names stay predictable and filterable at scale. Start at the naming conventions overview.
North star metric
The single metric a team optimizes for when two reasonable options conflict. Not the most important KPI; the tiebreaker. There can be many KPIs and exactly one north star. See reporting framework concepts and the data dictionary.
Objection
A concern a buyer raises that stands between them and a decision, usually carrying something accurate. An objection heard across several deals is a pattern with a best known answer, which is what makes it worth writing down rather than answering fresh each time. Handled per competitor in the competitor battle card.
One-ad test
The test that decides where a theme stops: could one responsive search ad be genuinely relevant to every keyword in the group? If writing a headline that suits one keyword makes it wrong for another, the group is two themes. More reliable than any keyword count. See search theme concepts.
Owner
The one person accountable for a piece of work from start to finish. The owner drives it forward, makes the calls it needs, coordinates anyone else involved, and answers for the result. Ownership is singular: one named person, not a team or a role, so there’s never a question of who to ask.
Pacing
Tracking spend against a budget over time to confirm a campaign will land on-target by the end of its flight, and adjusting before it over- or under-spends. See budget pacing.
Peeking
Checking a running test repeatedly and stopping it the moment the result looks significant. Each extra look gives the result another chance to cross the threshold by luck, so stopping on a good day inflates the false-positive rate: the test reports a winner that isn’t real. Avoid it by setting the sample size and end date before launch and letting the test run to that plan, whatever the numbers do along the way. Extending is only valid for an external reason (a traffic drop, a tracking break, a seasonal shift), never because the result hasn’t reached significance yet.
Phrase match
The match type that matches queries including the meaning of the keyword, with additional words before or after. Sits between exact and broad.
Pilot
Spend whose purpose is to find out whether something is worth continuing, where there is no control to compare against: a new channel, product line, or market. Judged against a threshold set before launch rather than against a variant, so it produces a decision rather than a measured lift. Recorded in a pilot brief and filed alongside experiments in the learning library.
Pinning
Fixing an asset to a specific position in an ad format that would otherwise assemble its own combinations, such as a responsive search ad. The only way to guarantee that a required claim or qualifier appears in every serve, at the cost of the combinations the platform can test. See legal review.
Point of difference
What a brand does that its alternatives don’t, that the target actually cares about. Only a difference if a competitor would dispute it. See positioning.
Positioning statement
A single working sentence naming the target, the competitive frame, the point of difference, and the reason to believe. Never used as copy. Used to test whether a campaign or headline fits. See positioning.
Product identifier
The short, permanent code assigned to a product in the product catalog and carried in campaign names and utm_campaign. What lets a report group spend by what was being sold rather than only by channel and objective. Never renamed or reused, including after a product is retired.
Proof point
A named customer, figure, quote, or artifact that makes a claim checkable. Distinct from a reason to believe, which is the category of evidence a position rests on. Each proof point carries its own clearance: whether the customer can be named, in what context, and whether the quote was approved. See the competitor battle card.
Quality Score
Google’s diagnostic estimate of ad quality, built from three components: expected clickthrough rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience. A theme touches all three, which is why it holds the keywords, the copy, and the landing page as one unit rather than three separate decisions.
Reason to believe
The evidence that makes a point of difference credible: a number, a mechanism, or a named customer. The part that fails quietly when a claim outlives its source. See positioning.
Responsive search ad
The Search ad format that assembles its own combinations from a pool of headlines and descriptions. Because any individual asset can be left out of a given serve, a phrase a theme depends on is only guaranteed to appear if it is pinned. See the Google Search copy template.
ROAS
Return on ad spend: revenue attributed to a channel divided by that channel’s ad spend. A per-channel, attributed metric, unlike the blended MER. See the ecommerce metrics starter pack.
Rollup
Building a longer report from the shorter reports underneath it by summing raw inputs across the shorter periods and recalculating every ratio from the totals, rather than averaging the shorter periods’ ratios directly. See data quality and rollup concepts.
Schema markup
Machine-readable statements about what a page is and what it contains, sitting alongside the visible content. Organization markup with sameAs links is what connects separate mentions of a company into one recognized entity. See article standards.
Search intent
What someone is actually trying to accomplish with a query, as opposed to the words they typed. A full question typed into a chat window usually reveals it more clearly than three words typed into a search box. See article brief concepts.
Search term
What a person actually typed, as opposed to the keyword that matched it. Keywords are what you bid on; search terms are what you receive. The gap between the two is where a theme drifts.
Search terms report
The Google Ads report listing the queries that triggered your ads. The place a boundary problem becomes visible, because the same search term appearing under two themes means those themes are competing.
Search theme
In this framework, one search intent held together as a single unit of planning: the intent statement, the keywords that express it, the customer profile behind them, the landing page they go to, and the ads written to match. On Google Search it becomes one ad group. Not the same as Google’s search themes. See search theme concepts.
A Google Ads field inside a Performance Max asset group where you add words and phrases customers use to find you. Google allows up to 50 per asset group (raised from 25 in 2025) and gives them the same prioritization as phrase and broad match keywords in a Search campaign. Exclusions and negative keywords still apply, and semantic duplicates such as “car” and “automobile” reach the same audience.
This is a platform input, not a planning document. Our search theme is the unit that decides what an ad group targets, who it speaks to, and where it sends them. The two share a name and do different jobs. Checked 13 August 2026.
Single keyword ad group (SKAG)
An ad group built around one keyword, with its own ads and bid. Once standard practice, now a narrow exception rather than a default: close variants loosened, broad match improved, and Smart Bidding needs conversion signal pooled rather than split. Still defensible for a single query with enough volume and value to justify its own page and ads, recorded as a deliberate choice.
Single theme ad group (STAG)
An ad group built around one intent and the several keywords that express it. The industry term for what this framework calls a search theme at the platform level.
Slug
The part of a URL that identifies a specific page, after the domain and any directory. Lowercase, hyphenated, and without a year, so an article can be updated in place rather than republished at a new address. See article standards.
SOP
Standard operating procedure: a documented, repeatable process for a recurring task, kept in the Processes tab.
Soundbite
A line written to be said out loud rather than read, short enough to survive a live conversation intact. Sits below the elevator pitch in length and is written per competitor on a battle card.
Source of truth
The one approved system for a given metric. When two systems disagree, the approved one wins. See reporting framework concepts and the data dictionary.
SQL
Sales qualified lead: a lead vetted by sales as ready for a direct conversation. Distinct from an MQL, which is a marketing judgment rather than a sales one. See the sales-led metrics starter pack.
Standard identifier
A permanent, always-present piece of a name (channel, objective, customer profile, offer, and so on) as opposed to a testing identifier. See naming conventions overview.
Statistical significance
The confidence level that a test result reflects a real difference rather than random variation. See the full statistical significance guide.
Supporting article
Any article outside the hero set: how-tos, comparisons, definitions, and news pieces that build the cluster around a hero article. Reviewed less often and retired freely, but still owned and still tracked. See the supporting article register.
Tagline
A 3 to 8 word line that reinforces the position. Judged on memorability, where a value proposition is judged on clarity. See messaging.
Testing identifier
An identifier appended to a name only while a hypothesis is actively being tested, marking which campaigns, ad sets, or ads belong to that test. See naming conventions overview and the experiment ID concepts.
Theme boundary
What one theme deliberately does not cover, and which theme covers it instead. Recorded in the boundaries section of the brief along with the terms negated at ad group level to enforce it.
The registered abbreviation for a theme, for example REPORTAUTO, used in the ad group name and the utm_content value. Comes from the ad group theme dictionary. A theme described in prose at build time produces a value no report can group by.
Themed ad group
An ad group organized around one intent rather than one keyword. Google’s current account structure guidance recommends it over single-keyword groups, on the reasoning that grouping keywords into similar themes makes it easier to understand the keywords, select the best one, and decide which ad should serve for each query.
Tier 1 / 2 / 3
The three KPI levels: outcomes the business is directly accountable for, the drivers that move them, and the diagnostics that explain why a driver moved. See reporting framework concepts.
Topical authority
Depth across a subject, built by covering a question, its sub-questions, and its edges in a connected cluster of articles rather than a single page. Distinct from entity authority, which is about being identifiable as a consistent entity. See SEO and GEO concepts.
Total cost of ownership (TCO)
What a product costs a buyer over a set period once implementation, seat structure, contract term, and post-signature charges are included, rather than the headline price. The shape of a pricing model usually matters more than the list figure, because per-seat and per-workspace pricing diverge as a team grows. Compared per competitor in the competitor battle card.
Type scale
The fixed set of sizes, line heights, and weights a brand’s text uses, so hierarchy reads as hierarchy instead of as arbitrary sizes. See visual identity.
UTM parameter
A tag appended to a URL that records where a click came from, so traffic and conversions can be attributed back to a campaign, source, and medium. Use “UTM parameter,” not “UTM tag.” See UTM parameters and UTM standards.
Value proposition
One sentence, in the reader’s language, saying what the brand does, for whom, and why it beats the alternative. The positioning statement rewritten for someone outside the company. See messaging.
Voice trait
A named characteristic of how a brand sounds, paired with a contrast that says where it stops (“direct, not blunt”) and a bad and good example of the trait in real copy. Without the contrast and the examples, a trait stretches to justify anything. See brand voice and tone.
Last modified on August 31, 2026
