Glossary: Google Ads, SEO, AI and buying applications – 27 terms

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Below are 27 terms that come up most often in AutomaizeIT's descriptions of services, applications and purchase rules – each with a short, general definition and a link to the related service where relevant.

Advertising and online sales

Google Ads – Google's advertising system, which shows ads in search results, on YouTube, on the Display Network and in Google Shopping, among other places. Advertisers usually pay per click. See: Google Ads management for e-commerce and for services and restaurants.

Performance Max – a Google Ads campaign type in which a single campaign runs ads across many Google channels (including Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps), with placements and bids largely automated based on conversion goals.

Google Merchant Center (GMC) – Google's tool for uploading and managing product data (a product feed). GMC data powers product campaigns and free product listings on Google.

Product campaign (Shopping, PLA) – an ad with a product image, name, price and store name, created automatically from Google Merchant Center data.

Allegro Ads – the advertising system of Allegro, a Polish online marketplace, in which sellers promote their listings in search results and on the platform's pages; sponsored listings are paid per click. See: Allegro Ads management.

ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) – advertising revenue divided by advertising cost. A ROAS of 500% means PLN 5 of revenue for every PLN 1 spent on ads. It does not take margin into account, so on its own it doesn't show whether a campaign is profitable.

CPC (Cost per Click) – the cost of a single click on an ad. In auction-based systems, the actual CPC is usually lower than the maximum bid set by the advertiser.

Conversion and conversion tracking – a conversion is a valuable user action, such as a purchase, a form submission or a phone call. Conversion tracking attributes these actions to campaigns so ads can be optimized for real results.

Remarketing – showing ads to people who previously visited a website or store. In the EU it usually requires the user's consent to cookies or similar technologies.

E-commerce manager – the person accountable for the result of the whole online sales channel: goals and metrics, campaigns, offer and pricing, and coordinating the team and suppliers. See: remote e-commerce manager.

E-commerce audit – an independent analysis of online sales: sales channels, campaigns and conversion measurement, the buying journey, data and processes, ending with recommendations. See: e-commerce audit.

SEO and technology

On-site SEO – work on the website itself that affects its search visibility: structure and indexing, content, headings and metadata, speed, internal linking and structured data. Its counterpart is off-site SEO (e.g. links from other websites). See: on-site SEO audit and on-site SEO optimization with implementation.

Structured data – markup in the page code (usually based on the schema.org vocabulary, in JSON-LD format) that describes content in a way search engines understand, e.g. a product, price or organization. It can make rich results possible but does not guarantee them.

Core Web Vitals – Google's set of user-experience metrics: LCP (loading time of the largest element; good is up to 2.5 s), INP (responsiveness to interactions; up to 200 ms) and CLS (layout stability; up to 0.1).

Canonical URL – an indication in the page code of which address is the main version of content available at several addresses. It helps avoid duplicates in search results, e.g. after a store migration.

API – an application programming interface through which programs exchange data and call each other's functions, e.g. a store and a warehouse system, or an application and an AI model. Example: AI Orchestrator gives access to many AI models through one API.

AI and automation

Process automation – software taking over repetitive, time-consuming tasks, such as preparing product descriptions, organizing data or reporting. See: AI implementation workshop and applications that optimize business processes.

Language model (LLM) – an artificial intelligence model trained on large amounts of text that generates answers by predicting the next pieces of text. It can make mistakes and produce false information, so its output is worth checking.

Prompt – an instruction given to an AI model. The quality of the prompt – context, goal, expected answer format – strongly affects the quality of the result.

Buying applications, VAT and customer rights

One-off license – a single payment for the right to use software within the scope set out in the license agreement. A license does not transfer the copyright in the software. See: applications.

Subscription – access to software for a set period, such as a month or a year. At AutomaizeIT, subscriptions are prepaid: before the period ends you receive an e-mail with a payment link, with no automatic charges.

Net and gross price – the net price excludes VAT, the gross price includes it. Consumers are shown the gross price, i.e. the total amount to pay.

OSS (One Stop Shop) – the EU scheme for accounting for VAT on, among other things, electronic services supplied to consumers in other EU countries: the seller files a single return in its country of registration instead of registering in each country. Above the EUR 10,000 annual threshold, the VAT rate of the consumer's country applies.

Reverse charge – a mechanism in which the buyer, not the seller, accounts for VAT. It applies, among other things, to services supplied to businesses in other EU countries that have a valid EU VAT number; the invoice is then issued without VAT and marked “reverse charge”.

VIES – the European Commission's system for checking whether a company's EU VAT number is valid. The result determines, among other things, whether the reverse charge applies.

Durable medium – any instrument that lets you store information and reproduce it unchanged, such as an e-mail with an attachment or a PDF file. Confirmations of contracts, for example, are provided on a durable medium.

Right of withdrawal – a consumer's (and a sole trader's with consumer rights) right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days without giving a reason. For digital content supplied immediately, the right is lost if the consumer expressly agreed to the supply starting and acknowledged losing the right. See: withdrawal – information.

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