Google Ads account hierarchy is a structured framework that organizes your advertising efforts into manageable levels, enabling efficient campaign management and optimization. Understanding this hierarchy is essential for passing the Google Ads Search Certification and running successful advertising campaigns.

At the top level sits the Google Ads Account, which serves as the primary container for all your advertising activities. Each account is associated with a unique email address, password, and billing information. Businesses may operate multiple accounts, especially agencies managing campaigns for various clients.

Beneath the account level, you will find Campaigns. These represent the highest organizational tier within an account and allow you to set overarching goals, budgets, and targeting preferences. Each campaign focuses on specific objectives such as sales, leads, or website traffic. You can run multiple campaigns simultaneously, each with distinct settings for location targeting, language preferences, and bid strategies.

Within each campaign exist Ad Groups, which provide a more granular level of organization. Ad groups contain related keywords and advertisements that share common themes. This structure allows advertisers to create highly relevant ad experiences by grouping similar products, services, or topics together. Effective ad group organization improves Quality Score and overall campaign performance.

The foundation of the hierarchy consists of Keywords and Ads. Keywords trigger your advertisements when users search for relevant terms on Google. Ads are the actual creative content displayed to potential customers, including headlines, descriptions, and display URLs. Each ad group typically contains multiple keywords and several ad variations to test effectiveness.

This hierarchical structure enables advertisers to maintain control over budgets at the campaign level while fine-tuning targeting and messaging at the ad group level. Proper organization facilitates easier reporting, optimization, and scaling of advertising efforts across your entire Google Ads presence.

Google Ads Account Settings serve as the foundational configuration layer that governs how your entire advertising account operates. These settings establish the framework within which all your campaigns, ad groups, and ads function.

At the account level, you configure several critical elements. First, your billing information determines how Google charges you for advertising costs, including payment methods like credit cards, bank accounts, or invoicing for eligible advertisers. You can set up automatic or manual payments based on your preferences.

Time zone selection is permanent once established and affects when your daily budgets reset and how your reporting data displays. This cannot be changed after initial setup, so careful consideration is essential.

Currency settings determine how costs are calculated and displayed throughout your account. Like time zone, this selection is permanent and impacts all financial reporting.

Account access and security settings allow you to manage who can view or modify your campaigns. You can assign different permission levels including administrative access, standard access, read-only access, or email-only access to team members or agencies.

Linked accounts enable connections to other Google services like Google Analytics, Google Merchant Center, YouTube, and Search Console. These integrations enhance tracking capabilities and expand advertising options.

Notification preferences let you customize which alerts and updates you receive via email, helping you stay informed about account performance, policy issues, or billing matters.

Auto-tagging automatically adds tracking parameters to your URLs, facilitating accurate conversion tracking and integration with analytics platforms.

Tracking templates at the account level establish URL parameters that apply across all campaigns unless overridden at lower levels.

Understanding these settings ensures proper account governance, accurate reporting, appropriate team collaboration, and seamless integration with other marketing tools and platforms.

Google Ads offers several campaign types, each designed to help advertisers achieve specific marketing objectives across different platforms and networks. Understanding these campaign types is essential for creating an effective account structure.

**Search Campaigns** display text ads on Google Search results pages when users actively search for keywords related to your products or services. These campaigns are ideal for capturing high-intent traffic and driving conversions.

**Display Campaigns** show visual banner ads across the Google Display Network, which includes millions of websites, apps, and Google-owned properties like YouTube and Gmail. These campaigns excel at building brand awareness and reaching audiences while they browse online content.

**Shopping Campaigns** showcase product listings with images, prices, and merchant information. These appear on Google Search, the Shopping tab, and partner websites. Retailers use these campaigns to promote inventory and drive e-commerce sales.

**Video Campaigns** run video advertisements on YouTube and across the Google Video Partners network. Advertisers can choose from various formats including skippable ads, non-skippable ads, and bumper ads to engage audiences through compelling visual storytelling.

**App Campaigns** promote mobile applications across Search, Display, YouTube, and Google Play. Google's machine learning optimizes ad placement and creative combinations to drive app installs and in-app actions.

**Performance Max Campaigns** utilize automation to access all Google Ads inventory from a single campaign. This campaign type uses machine learning to optimize performance across Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps, and Discover.

**Discovery Campaigns** reach users across Google's personalized feeds including the Discover feed, YouTube Home, and Gmail promotions tabs.

When structuring your Google Ads account, selecting the appropriate campaign type aligns your advertising efforts with your business goals. Each campaign type offers unique targeting options, bidding strategies, and ad formats to maximize your return on investment.

Search Campaign Settings are crucial configurations that determine how your Google Ads search campaigns operate and perform. These settings establish the foundation for your advertising strategy and control various aspects of ad delivery.

Campaign Name: Choose a descriptive name that helps you identify the campaign's purpose, making account management easier.

Networks: Select where your ads appear. You can choose Google Search Network, which includes Google search results pages, and optionally include Search Partners (non-Google sites that partner with Google to show ads).

Locations: Target specific geographic areas where you want your ads to display. You can target countries, regions, cities, or radius targeting around specific locations. You can also exclude areas where you do not want to advertise.

Languages: Select the languages your potential customers speak. Google uses this setting to match ads with users based on their language preferences.

Budget: Set your daily budget, which represents the average amount you are willing to spend per day. Google may exceed this on high-traffic days but balances it over the month.

Bidding Strategy: Choose how you want to bid for ad placements. Options include manual CPC, automated strategies like Maximize Clicks, Maximize Conversions, Target CPA, or Target ROAS, depending on your campaign goals.

Ad Schedule: Specify days and times when your ads should run. This helps optimize budget by showing ads when your target audience is most active.

Ad Rotation: Determine how Google rotates your ads within an ad group. Options include optimizing for best-performing ads or rotating them evenly.

Start and End Dates: Set specific timeframes for campaign activation, useful for seasonal promotions or limited-time offers.

Proper configuration of these settings ensures your campaigns reach the right audience at the right time while maintaining budget control and achieving optimal performance aligned with your business objectives.

Campaign Goals and Objectives in Google Ads represent the foundation of any successful advertising strategy. When creating a campaign, advertisers must first define what they want to achieve, as this determines how the campaign will be structured and optimized.

Google Ads offers several primary campaign objectives:

1. **Sales**: Designed to drive purchases, whether online, in-app, by phone, or in-store. This objective focuses on reaching customers who are ready to buy.

2. **Leads**: Aims to encourage potential customers to take action by submitting their contact information, signing up for newsletters, or requesting quotes.

3. **Website Traffic**: Focuses on bringing relevant visitors to your website, increasing engagement with your content and offerings.

4. **Product and Brand Consideration**: Helps encourage potential customers to explore your products or services when they are researching options.

5. **Brand Awareness and Reach**: Targets a broad audience to increase visibility and ensure your brand message reaches as many relevant people as possible.

6. **App Promotion**: Specifically designed to drive app installations and engagement across various platforms.

Selecting the appropriate goal influences several key aspects of your campaign, including available bid strategies, ad formats, and targeting options. Google Ads uses machine learning to optimize campaigns based on the selected objective, adjusting delivery to maximize results aligned with your goals.

Best practices include aligning campaign objectives with your overall business strategy, setting measurable key performance indicators (KPIs), and regularly reviewing performance data to ensure objectives are being met. Advertisers should also consider the customer journey and create separate campaigns for different stages of the marketing funnel.

Understanding and properly configuring campaign goals ensures your advertising budget is spent efficiently, targeting the right audience with the appropriate message at optimal moments throughout their decision-making process.

Ad Group Structure is a fundamental component of Google Ads account organization that sits between campaigns and individual ads. Understanding this hierarchy is essential for managing effective search advertising campaigns.

An ad group contains one or more ads that share similar targets. Within each campaign, you can create multiple ad groups to organize your advertisements by common themes, products, or services. This structure allows advertisers to maintain relevance between keywords, ads, and landing pages.

The key elements within an ad group include:

1. Keywords: These are the search terms that trigger your ads to appear. Each ad group should contain closely related keywords that share a common theme. Google recommends grouping 10-20 keywords per ad group for optimal performance.

2. Ads: Each ad group houses multiple ad variations that will be shown when users search for your targeted keywords. Having several ads allows Google to test which performs best through rotation.

3. Bids: You can set maximum cost-per-click bids at the ad group level, though keyword-level bids can override these settings when needed.

4. Landing Pages: The destination URLs where users arrive after clicking your ads should be relevant to the ad group theme.

Best practices for ad group structure include:

- Creating tightly themed ad groups with closely related keywords
- Writing ad copy that matches the keywords in each group
- Ensuring landing pages align with both keywords and ad messaging
- Using single keyword ad groups (SKAGs) for high-priority terms
- Regularly reviewing and refining ad groups based on performance data

A well-organized ad group structure improves Quality Score, which affects ad rank and cost-per-click. Higher relevance between keywords, ads, and landing pages leads to better user experiences and more efficient spending. This granular organization enables precise performance tracking and easier optimization of your Google Ads campaigns.

Single Theme Ad Groups (STAGs) represent a strategic approach to organizing your Google Ads account structure that focuses on grouping keywords around one central theme or concept within each ad group. This methodology has evolved from the earlier Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) approach, offering a more manageable and equally effective alternative.

The core principle behind STAGs is maintaining tight thematic relevance between your keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. Instead of creating separate ad groups for every single keyword variation, STAGs allow you to group closely related keywords that share the same intent and meaning together. For example, if you sell running shoes, a STAG might include keywords like "buy running shoes," "running shoes for sale," and "purchase running shoes" since they all represent the same user intent.

The benefits of implementing STAGs in your Google Ads account are substantial. First, they improve your Quality Score because your ads can be highly relevant to all keywords within the group. Higher Quality Scores typically lead to better ad positions and lower cost-per-click rates. Second, STAGs simplify account management compared to SKAGs, as you have fewer ad groups to monitor and optimize while still maintaining strong relevance.

When creating STAGs, focus on user intent rather than exact keyword matching. Group keywords that would naturally lead to the same landing page and benefit from the same ad messaging. This approach allows you to write compelling, specific ad copy that resonates with searchers and improves click-through rates.

STAGs also facilitate better budget allocation and performance analysis. With clearly defined themes, you can easily identify which product categories or service offerings perform best and adjust your spending accordingly. This granular structure provides cleaner data for making informed optimization decisions and scaling successful campaigns effectively within your Google Ads account.

Budget Settings and Allocation in Google Ads refers to how advertisers manage and distribute their advertising spend across campaigns to maximize return on investment. Understanding this concept is essential for the Google Ads Search Certification.

At the campaign level, advertisers set a daily budget, which represents the average amount they are willing to spend per day on that specific campaign. Google may spend up to twice your daily budget on high-traffic days to capture additional opportunities, but will balance this over the month so you never exceed your monthly charging limit (daily budget multiplied by 30.4 days).

There are two primary budget delivery methods. Standard delivery spreads your budget evenly throughout the day, ensuring consistent ad visibility. Accelerated delivery (now limited) spends budget as quickly as possible, which can exhaust funds early in the day.

Shared budgets allow advertisers to allocate a single budget pool across multiple campaigns. This feature is particularly useful when managing numerous campaigns with similar goals, as Google automatically distributes funds to campaigns with the highest potential for conversions.

Strategic budget allocation involves analyzing campaign performance data to determine where money should be invested. High-performing campaigns generating strong returns deserve larger budget portions, while underperforming campaigns may need reduced funding or optimization before receiving additional investment.

Seasonal adjustments are crucial for budget planning. Advertisers should anticipate periods of increased demand and adjust budgets accordingly to capture peak traffic opportunities.

Budget recommendations within Google Ads provide suggestions based on historical data and missed impression share due to budget constraints. These insights help advertisers identify campaigns that could benefit from increased funding.

Effective budget management requires regular monitoring of key metrics including cost-per-click, conversion rates, and return on ad spend. By continuously evaluating these performance indicators, advertisers can make informed decisions about reallocating budgets to optimize overall account performance and achieve business objectives.

In Google Ads, budget management is crucial for controlling advertising spend effectively. There are two primary budget types: Daily Budget and Shared Budget.

**Daily Budget**

A daily budget is the average amount you're willing to spend per day on a specific campaign. Google may spend up to twice your daily budget on high-traffic days to maximize results, but will balance this over the month so you never exceed your monthly charging limit (daily budget × 30.4 days). Each campaign has its own individual daily budget, giving advertisers granular control over spending for different products, services, or marketing objectives. This approach works well when campaigns have distinct performance goals or require separate budget allocation based on priority.

**Shared Budget**

A shared budget allows multiple campaigns to draw from a single budget pool. Instead of setting individual daily budgets for each campaign, you create one shared budget that Google Ads automatically distributes across all linked campaigns based on their performance and opportunity. This is particularly useful when managing numerous campaigns with similar goals or when you want Google to optimize spend allocation automatically. Shared budgets help ensure that high-performing campaigns receive adequate funding while preventing underperforming campaigns from consuming unnecessary resources.

**Key Differences**

1. **Control**: Daily budgets offer precise control per campaign; shared budgets provide flexibility across campaigns.

2. **Management**: Daily budgets require individual adjustments; shared budgets simplify management for multiple campaigns.

3. **Optimization**: With shared budgets, Google reallocates funds to campaigns with better opportunities throughout the day.

4. **Use Cases**: Daily budgets suit campaigns with specific spending requirements; shared budgets work best when overall performance matters more than individual campaign spend.

Choosing between these options depends on your advertising strategy, the number of campaigns you manage, and how much control you need over individual campaign spending.

Geographic targeting, also known as geo-targeting or location targeting, is a fundamental feature within Google Ads that allows advertisers to display their advertisements to users based on their physical location or expressed geographic interest. This powerful tool enables businesses to reach potential customers in specific countries, regions, cities, postal codes, or even within a defined radius around a particular address.

Within the Google Ads account structure, geographic targeting is configured at the campaign level, meaning each campaign can have its own unique location settings. This provides advertisers with flexibility to create separate campaigns for different markets or regions, each with tailored budgets, bids, and messaging.

There are two primary targeting methods available. The first is targeting by presence, which reaches users who are physically located in or frequently visit your targeted areas. The second is targeting by search interest, which reaches users who have shown interest in your targeted locations through their search behavior, even if they are not physically present there.

Advertisers can also implement location exclusions to prevent ads from showing in specific areas where they do not want to advertise. This is particularly useful for businesses with limited service areas or those wanting to avoid regions where their products or services are unavailable.

Bid adjustments can be applied to geographic targets, allowing advertisers to increase or decrease bids for specific locations based on performance data. For example, if a particular city generates higher conversion rates, advertisers can set positive bid adjustments to compete more aggressively for that audience.

Geographic targeting helps optimize advertising budgets by focusing spend on areas most likely to generate valuable customers. It also improves ad relevance and quality scores by ensuring ads reach appropriate audiences. Proper implementation of geographic targeting is essential for local businesses, regional service providers, and international companies seeking to customize their advertising approach for different markets.

Location Options in Google Ads determine how your ads are triggered based on geographic targeting. There are two primary settings: Presence and Interest, which can be used separately or combined to refine your audience reach.

**Presence (People in your targeted locations)**
This option shows your ads to users who are physically located in your specified geographic areas. Google determines this through IP addresses, device locations, and other signals. For example, if you target London, your ads will appear to people currently in London, regardless of what they are searching for. This setting is ideal for local businesses like restaurants, retail stores, or service providers who need customers to visit a physical location.

**Interest (People searching for your targeted locations)**
This option displays your ads to users who demonstrate interest in your targeted locations through their search queries, even if they are not physically present there. For instance, someone in Manchester searching for "hotels in London" would see your London-targeted ads. This benefits businesses like hotels, tourism services, and real estate agencies that attract customers from outside their area.

**Combined Option (Presence or Interest)**
Google Ads defaults to combining both settings, reaching users who are either physically in your targeted location OR showing interest in it. This provides maximum reach but may result in less precise targeting.

**Exclusion Options**
You can also exclude locations using similar criteria, preventing ads from showing to people in specific areas or those interested in those areas.

**Best Practices**
Choose Presence-only for strictly local businesses requiring physical visits. Select Interest-only when targeting travelers or people planning to relocate. Use the combined option for broader campaigns where both audiences are valuable. Regularly review your geographic performance reports to optimize your location targeting strategy and ensure efficient budget allocation across different regions.

Language Targeting in Google Ads is a fundamental setting that allows advertisers to reach users based on their language preferences. This feature ensures your ads are displayed to people who understand the language in which your advertisements are written, maximizing relevance and engagement.

When setting up language targeting, Google determines a user's language through several signals, including their Google interface language settings, search query language, previously viewed pages, and browser language preferences. This multi-signal approach helps Google accurately identify which users should see your ads.

At the account structure level, language targeting can be configured at the campaign level, meaning all ad groups within a campaign share the same language settings. Advertisers can select one or multiple languages per campaign, providing flexibility to reach diverse audiences. For instance, a business operating in multilingual regions like Canada or Switzerland might target both English and French speakers within a single campaign.

Best practices for language targeting include aligning your targeted languages with the languages used in your ad copy and landing pages. If you target Spanish speakers, your ads and website content should be in Spanish to provide a cohesive user experience. Mismatched language targeting can lead to poor performance metrics and wasted ad spend.

Google Ads also offers the option to target "All languages," which can be useful for brands with universal appeal or when using Dynamic Search Ads. However, this broad approach requires careful consideration of your actual audience composition.

Language targeting works in conjunction with location targeting to refine your audience reach. For example, you might target English speakers located in Germany, capturing expatriates or bilingual users in that market.

Understanding and properly implementing language targeting is essential for campaign success, as it directly impacts ad relevance, click-through rates, and overall return on investment in your Google Ads campaigns.

Ad Schedule Settings in Google Ads allow advertisers to control when their ads appear to potential customers. This powerful feature enables you to specify particular days of the week and times of day when you want your advertisements to be shown, helping you maximize your advertising budget and reach your target audience at optimal moments.

Within the Google Ads account structure, Ad Schedule Settings can be configured at the campaign level. This means each campaign can have its own unique schedule based on when your target audience is most likely to engage with your ads. For example, a restaurant might choose to show ads during lunch and dinner hours, while a B2B software company might focus on standard business hours.

To set up an ad schedule, navigate to your campaign settings and look for the Ad Schedule option. You can create custom schedules by selecting specific days and time blocks. Google Ads divides the day into 15-minute increments, giving you precise control over when your ads run.

One valuable feature within Ad Schedule Settings is bid adjustments. You can increase or decrease your bids during certain time periods based on performance data. If you notice higher conversion rates on Tuesday afternoons, you can set a positive bid adjustment to compete more aggressively during those hours. Conversely, you can reduce bids during lower-performing time slots.

Best practices for using Ad Schedule Settings include analyzing your historical performance data to identify peak conversion times, considering your customers time zones if you serve multiple regions, and regularly reviewing and adjusting your schedules based on ongoing performance metrics. Remember that ad scheduling works in conjunction with your daily budget, so your ads will still respect budget limitations even during scheduled times. This feature is essential for efficient campaign management and cost optimization.

Device Targeting in Google Ads is a powerful feature that allows advertisers to control how and where their ads appear based on the type of device users are using. This capability is essential for optimizing campaign performance and reaching the right audience at the right time.

Google Ads recognizes three primary device categories: computers (desktops and laptops), mobile devices (smartphones), and tablets. Each device type represents different user behaviors and intent patterns. For example, mobile users often search for local information or make quick decisions, while desktop users may conduct more detailed research.

Within Google Ads account structure, device targeting operates at the campaign level. Advertisers can set bid adjustments ranging from -100% to +900% for each device type. A -100% bid adjustment effectively excludes that device category from seeing your ads, while positive adjustments increase your bids for specific devices where you see better performance.

To implement effective device targeting, advertisers should analyze their conversion data to understand which devices drive the best results. The Google Ads interface provides detailed performance metrics broken down by device, including clicks, impressions, conversion rates, and cost per conversion.

Strategic device targeting considerations include understanding your audience behavior patterns, the nature of your products or services, and your website or landing page mobile optimization. If your landing pages perform poorly on mobile devices, reducing mobile bids may improve overall ROI.

Best practices involve regularly reviewing device performance reports, testing different bid adjustments, and aligning device strategy with business objectives. Some advertisers create device-specific campaigns for granular control over budgets and messaging.

Device targeting integrates with other targeting options like location, demographics, and ad scheduling to create comprehensive audience strategies that maximize advertising effectiveness and return on investment.

Network Settings in Google Ads determine where your advertisements will appear across Google's extensive advertising ecosystem. When setting up a campaign, you must choose which networks will display your ads, and this decision significantly impacts your reach, performance, and overall campaign strategy.

The primary network options include the Google Search Network and the Google Display Network. The Google Search Network encompasses Google's search results pages, Google Maps, Google Shopping, and search partner sites. When users actively search for keywords related to your business, your ads can appear alongside organic search results. This network is ideal for capturing high-intent traffic from users actively seeking products or services.

The Google Display Network consists of millions of websites, apps, and Google-owned properties like YouTube and Gmail. This network reaches over 90% of internet users worldwide and is excellent for building brand awareness and remarketing to previous visitors.

Within campaign settings, you can select Search Partners, which extends your reach to non-Google search engines and websites that partner with Google. While this can increase visibility, it may also affect your cost-per-click and conversion rates differently than core Google Search.

For Search campaigns, Google recommends starting with the Search Network only to maintain better control over where ads appear and to gather cleaner performance data. You can always expand to include Display Network later through campaign settings adjustments.

Understanding Network Settings helps advertisers align their campaigns with specific business objectives. Brand awareness campaigns might benefit from Display Network inclusion, while lead generation or sales-focused campaigns often perform better restricted to Search Network only.

Proper network configuration ensures your budget is spent efficiently, reaching the most relevant audiences at the appropriate stages of their customer journey. Regular monitoring of network performance through segmented reporting allows for ongoing optimization of these settings.