Important Metrics to Know for Google Ads
A comprehensive guide to understanding key Google Ads metrics.
Google Ads Core Metrics
Impressions
Impressions tell you how many times your ad is served. Think of this as the total number of times your ad was seen.
This does not tell you the number of unique users who saw the ad, just the total number of times the ad was served. One user may have seen the same ad several times.
This is useful to get an understanding of how far your ad is reaching and to ensure it�s being served.
Interactions
Interactions are the number of actions taken with your ad. In this case, it�s the main action taken for the specific ad type you�re running, like a click for text or Shopping ads and views for video ads. As such, they�re a vital metric to watch.
Interaction Rate
Your interaction rate is the ratio of interactions to impressions, found by dividing your total interactions to impressions. This gives you a quick at-a-glance metric to tell you how many people who see your ad are engaging with it.
Average Cost
This is a vital metric, telling you the average cost per interaction that you�ve paid. It will divide the total cost by your number of interactions. This is important to watch, because while some interactions will cost more and some will cost less, the average tells you a lot about how much you�re spending for clicks or views.
Cost
Cost details the total sum that you�ve paid for this particular campaign. This helps you track your overall ad spend.
Conversions
The conversions metric shows you the number of conversions you�ve received after initial ad interactions like clicks or views from all of the actions you�ve included here. Sometimes the interactions may be counted if you choose to include them, but other times you�re focusing exclusively on conversion types like appointments booked or purchases made.
Cost per Conversion
The average cost you�re paying for each individual conversion. The total number of conversions are divided by cost. Since some users will interact with your ads but not convert, this gives you a better idea of how much you�re paying for individual conversions and not just potentially empty clicks as long as your conversions are tracking properly.
Search Impression Share
This metric tells you the impressions you�ve received on Google�s search sites divided by the total estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive based on bids, quality, targeting settings, and approval statuses.
Simply put: Impression share determines how often your ad is showing up in placements you want and qualify for. Not every ad appears in every relevant, qualifying search.
Quality Score
Your Quality Score takes a number of factors into account in order to give each individual campaign a score that assesses its potential relevance, quality, and success. It�s a complicated but vital score, as it can increase placements and rank and lower cost when it�s high, but decrease performance and increase cost when your ad rank is poor.
Performance Metrics to Measure Traffic/Spend
Clicks
The total number of clicks your ad has received. This metric helps you understand how relevant the ad was to the users who saw it and is an indicator of quality, relevance, and interest. Clicks are the most common primary interaction with an ad.
CTR
Click-through rate (CTR) tells you how many users saw your ad and clicked on it. It�s your total number of clicks divided by impressions. High click-through rate is a good indicator that your ad is highly relevant to the user�s search.
Engagements
This is any type of engagement with an ad, like viewing it for at least ten seconds or clicking on a video ad.
Engagement Rate
The number of engagements per the total number of impressions, which is found by dividing total engagements by impressions. Interaction rate is most relevant, but this is another good metric to keep an eye on to see how relevant or engaging your ad is to users.
Invalid Clicks
Invalid clicks are any clicks that Google considers to be illegitimate and may include repeated manual clicks or those generated by automated tools, bots, or fraudulent software. The advertiser is not charged for them, and they don�t impact any of your other statistics.
Invalid Click Rate
The percentage of clicks that have been removed from your total number of clicks due to being invalid. Again, the invalid clicks do not impact your campaign performance or your account standing in any way.
Invalid Interactions
These are any interactions that Google considers to be illegitimate and doesn�t charge you for. Repeated manual views or clicks or those auto-generated are again often at fault here, and it can include invalid clicks but is not limited to them.
Average CPC
This tells you how your average cost-per-click (CPC), which determines how much you�re paying on average for each individual click. It�s important to remember that this is just an average, and some cost more than others, but this is a good baseline you can use to compare different campaigns with.
Average CPM
Average CPM is your average cost per thousand impressions. This metric is not as vital as other interaction-specific performance metrics like CPA, CPA, or CPV.
Average CPV
Average cost-per-view (CPV) is a video-only metric that tells you the average amount you paid each time someone watches your video ad. It�s calculated by the total cost of all views divided by the total number of views.
Average CPA
This is your average cost-per-action (CPA) is the average target your bid strategy optimized for over a certain time period. It does include bid adjustments and ad group target CPAs.
Average Target ROAS
Average target return on ad spend (ROAS) is the target that your bid strategy optimized for over a selected period of time. This is something that you can manually set.
Competitive Metrics Against the Competition
Search Top Impression Share
The impressions you�ve received in the top section of the search results page, above organic results, divided by the estimated number of impressions you were eligible to receive in this location.
This metric can be useful in helping you to determine if you need to improve your bid to rank for the top of page location, or if you need to tweak your keyword relevance. Learn more about how these factors impact Quality Score here.
Search Absolute Top Impression Share
The percentage of search ad impressions shown in the top, number one slot of the search page. It�s calculated by dividing absolute top impressions by total eligible top impressions.
Search Lost Impression Share (Rank)
This metric is an estimate of how often your ad didn�t show up on Google search sites due to a poor ad ranking. Keep an eye on this metric if you feel your ads are underperforming; it can be useful for troubleshooting.
Search Lost Top Absolute Impression Share (Rank)
An estimate of how often your ad wasn�t the very first ad above organic search results due to a low ad rank.
Search Lost Absolute Top Impressions Share (Budget)
Estimates how often your ad wasn�t the first ad above organic search results due to low budget; this is a red flag that you may need to consider upping your bid for high-value keywords if you can.
Search Lost Impression Share (Budget)
An estimate of how often your ad didn�t show up at all on Google search sites due to a low budget.
Search Lost Top Impression Share (Budget)
An estimate of how often your ad didn�t show up above organic search results due to a low budget.
Search Exact Match Impression Share
This is the exact match impressions you�ve received, divided by the estimated number of exact match impressions you were eligible to receive.
Exact match impressions are those that either were an exact match of your keywords or were close variants.
Display Impression Share
The impressions you�ve received on the Google Display Network divided by the estimated number of impressions that you were eligible to receive.
Display Lost Impression Share (Rank)
The estimated percentage of impressions your ads didn�t receive on the Google Display Network due to poor Ad Rank. If this is the case, look into Google�s Better Ad Standards and see if that can help improve ad quality.
Display Lost Impression Share (Budget)
This estimates how often your ad didn�t show up in the Display Network when it otherwise could have due to low budget.
Click Share
�Click share� is the clicks your ads have received on the Search Network divided by the estimated maximum number of clicks you could have otherwise received.