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This could be anything from a mobile search (someone looking for «pizza near me» on their phone) to a local service search (someone looking for a dentist or a plumber in their area) to someone shopping for a gift («Mother’s Day flowers») or a high-end item like enterprise software. All of these searches trigger pay-per-click ads.
In pay-per-click advertising, businesses running ads are only charged when a user actually clicks on their ad, hence the name “pay-per-click.”
Other forms of PPC advertising include display advertising and remarketing.

How Does Pay-Per-Click Advertising Work?

In order for ads to appear alongside the results on a search engine (commonly referred to as a Search Engine Results Page, or SERP), advertisers cannot simply pay more to ensure that their ads appear more prominently than their competitor’s ads. Instead, ads are subject to what is known as the Ad Auction, an entirely automated process that Google and other major search engines use to determine the relevance and validity of advertisements that appear on their SERPs.

How Keywords Work in Pay-Per-Click Advertising

As its name implies, the Ad Auction is a bidding system. This means that advertisers must bid on the terms they want to “trigger,” or display, their ads. These terms are known as keywords.
Say, for example, that your business specializes in camping equipment. A user wanting to purchase a new tent, sleeping bag, or portable stove might enter the keyword “camping equipment” into a search engine to find retailers offering these items.