Google AdWords

AdWords is Google’s self-service advertising program. It’s how advertisers get their text ads shown in the “sponsored links” sections of Google’s search results pages. It’s also how they get their ads (including image and video ads) shown on the websites of Google’s partners, including those that are part of Google’s AdSense program.

How It Works

AdWords is a self-service system administered from your web browser. After you register for an account (see below), you login to the AdWords management console. From there you can create your advertisements and monitor their performance.

Most AdWords advertisers place text ads. Text ads consist of four lines of information: a title, two lines of description, and a web address (URL). There are limits on the length of each line. The title is limited to 25 characters or less, the other lines to 35 characters (each) or less. Ads most also conform to Google’s editorial policies, which includes using proper spelling, capitalization and punctuation and avoiding excessive hype and promises. Ads which don’t follow Google’s policies get flagged for review by a human editor who will ultimately judge if they’re acceptable or not.

Most ads are shown using a keyword-triggered model. The advertiser associates the ad with a list of keywords and specifies a maximum per-click value that they’re willing to pay along with a daily budget that they don’t want to exceed. A competitive auction process happens internally among all the advertisers who are bidding for a particular keyword to sort out which ad gets shown in which order. The auction involves not just the bid price but also how well the advertiser’s ads have worked in the past (the clickthrough rate, or CTR) and how relevant the landing page (the page the user is sent to when they click an ad) is to the ad and to the keyword in question.

Ads can also be shown on specific partner sites using site targeting, in which case a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) model is used in place of the keyword-triggered’s cost per click (CPC) model.

More information about AdWords can be had from a number of sources. For Internet marketers I generally recommend they read Beating AdWords. If you prefer printed books, then Perry Marshall’s Ultimate Guide to Google AdWords is a great reference.

AdWords Signup

To sign up for AdWords, just click the button below and have you credit card ready. The signup fee is only $5 and you can start advertising immediately.


Don’t hesitate. Do it now. It’s an easy way to advertise to a targeted audience, and you can have your ad shown on Google’s search pages in as little as 15 minutes!