Impressions on the adwords campaign

what do impressions show

[Nutstretch]

When you look at your campaigns and they show the number of impressions a key word has had, does this just include times when your ad is displayed or it is all the times the keyword has been used even if your budget for the day has gone? Any help on this would be great

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Prescription Drugs...

Welcome to WebmasterWorld, Nutstretch.

An impression means that your ad has appeared on the page - and is not a reflection of the total number of times the keyword has been searched.

Quoting from the Glossary @(https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=29)

The "Impr" located on your reporting statistics refers to the number of "impressions" for your ad. The number of impressions is the number of times an ad is displayed on Google or on sites or products in the Google Network.

Note: However, if your budget is set for your ad to reliably show 24/7, then it could actually amount to the same thing as the total number of searches.

AWA