Here’s how a Google Search Campaign works

One of the options within Google Ads is a Google Search Campaign. This shows your ad directly at the top of the search results page.

Google Search Campaign

Starting a Google Search Campaign helps customers find your product or service provider. With a Google Search Campaign, your ad is displayed at the top of the search results page when a relevant search is performed.(1)

A Google Search Campaign must be well thought out before it is set up.

Questions in preparing such a campaign are:

  • Where do you want your ads to be seen?
  • How much do you want to invest?
  • What do you want to share in your ad?
  • What keywords do you want matched with your customers’ search terms?

Marketing Goals

Campaigns are created around a marketing goal and the actions you want customers to take. You can change this marketing goal whenever you want.

Examples of marketing goals are:

  • Sales (higher conversion)
  • Leads (newsletters, downloading white papers)
  • Website traffic (getting more visitors to the website)

Ralf van Veen

SEO Specialist

With 11 years of experience, I improve the organic findability of businesses.

Google Search Network

To determine where you can get the most views with your ads, you can select Google Search Network (which includes Google Search Partners) is located. This ensures that ads are shown on Google Search, as well as on websites that are partners of Google. The networks option shows you where you want to place your add, based on the campaign type selected. For example, through the Google Search Network, an add can be displayed on Google Search sites, but also on platforms such as Google Play, Google Shopping and Google Maps. Even partners of Google (such as CNN) will display the ads.(2)

Campaigns can be deployed for all devices, including desktop, tablet and mobile. Also, ads can be customized depending on the device being used.

Campaign ads can be customized by geographic location and language settings. For example, a small Rotterdam bakery will only be shown to the city of Rotterdam, and your campaign selection by language can ensure that your ads are only shown in countries that use that language

After determining the budget (in terms of how much per day you want to pay), a bidding strategy must be determined. A bid strategy determines how you pay for users who interact with your ads. You can determine this strategy yourself, or you can have it automated for you by Google Ads. The budget you choose is the average amount you want to spend per day on the advertisements.

Ad Groups

A specific text ad can be created for each ad group, along with a list of Keywords. These keywords will trigger the ad to be shown to customers. Ad groups can be created around themes or products. For this reason, for example, bikes can be divided into different ad groups such as: mountain bikes, children’s bikes and road bikes.

Text Ads

Text ads contain a:

  • Headline (to catch the customer’s attention);
  • URL (To reach a particular page of your website);
  • Description (Where details of your product or service are highlighted)

Dynamic Search Ads

A way to generate ad groups with dynamic text and keywords based on the text on the website. This happens completely automatically.

Ad Extensions

these offer you option to add additional information to your ads, such as location, links to pages or phone number.

Start and end date / Ad Scheduling

Campaigns can be set up in advance with a start and end date.Ads can also be set to display on a set schedule, such as on a number of specific days in the week.

Ralf van Veen

SEO Specialist

With 11 years of experience, I improve the organic findability of businesses.

How google picks ads to show to customers

Google’ search engine goes through all advertiser campaigns to look for keywords in the add groups, hoping to match the search term entered by the customer. Once an advertiser has created an add group they set up a bidding strategy to determine how much they want to pay when the customer sounds on their link. This “auction” takes place every time a search term is entered into Google.

Resources

  1. In-Depth Guide to How Google Search Works | Google Search Central | Documentation | Google for Developers. (s.d.-c). Google For Developers. https://developers.google.com/search/docs/fundamentals/how-search-works
  2. Export Search Partner Recommendations. (s.d.). Google For Developers. https://developers.google.com/google-ads/scripts/docs/solutions/export-search-partner-recommendations
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This article was originally published on 29 March 2024. The last update of this article was on 26 September 2024. The content of this page was written and approved by Ralf van Veen. Learn more about the creation of my articles in my editorial guidelines.