Google offers paid advertisements that appear in search results on google.com with the use of Google Ads or advertisements that appear on other websites through the Display Network and Google’s AdSense program.

Every second, there are 2.3 million searches performed on Google, and the majority of search results pages include Google ads. Paid for by businesses, Google ads can be an extremely effective way of driving relevant, qualified traffic to your website exactly when people are searching for the types of products or services your business offers.

Why Google Ads Appear

The Google Ads auction is focused on keywords – advertisers choose a list of keywords to target that is relevant to their business offerings, the words that people are most likely to use when searching for their product. They then bid on these keywords, basing each bid on how much they are willing to pay for a Google user to click on their ad. This bid, combined with a Quality Score assigned by Google based on the quality of your proposed ad, determines which Google ads appear on the SERP. When users click the ads, the advertiser pays a certain cost (the cost per click, or CPC).