How to Find the Search Terms Report
One of the most common pitfalls of Google Ads is search terms. Not every new advertiser may know that the keywords they choose can be shown for a very wide range of search terms, many of which may not be relevant. The difference between the two is pretty simple to understand: keywords are the words or phrases you set in Google Ads for targeting, while search terms are the actual queries users type in that trigger your ad.
For example, in newly launched search advertising campaigns in accounts that do not have previously accumulated negative keywords, the share of irrelevant traffic can be 50-70%, for which you pay from your budget. As a result – high cost of conversion or their complete absence.
First, let’s find this report: go to the search campaign, then to Insights and reports, and here you have the Search terms section.
What You Can Solve with Search Terms Report?
Regular analysis of the search terms report will help to significantly improve the situation. Working with it, you can solve 3 main tasks at once:
– find new keywords with high conversion potential;
– identify and eliminate problems with Ad strength and Quality score of keywords;
– add irrelevant search terms to the negative keywords lists, gradually clearing your account of junk traffic.
Let’s go through them in more detail:
Adding search terms with high conversion potential to the list of keywords:
– If you see search terms that have brought conversions and are not in the main keywords list, then you can add such keys to the campaign, since there is a high probability that this query will bring conversions in the future. In this case, it is advisable to create a separate Ad group and Responsive Search Ad (RSA) for it for maximum relevance.
The search term brought 2 conversions, but it is not in the Keywords list. But the group “collision near me – repair” is not relevant to it, so we will create a separate Ad Group with the most relevant RSA.
Improve Ad Strength and QS
Improving Ad strength and Quality score:
– also in the search terms report you can see that some of the queries have a good or average CTR, and some have a lower one. It is worth taking a closer look at the keywords that generate these search terms – are they relevant to other keywords in this Ad group, are they relevant to RSA in this group, is the Ad strength of RSA Good or Excellent.
To improve productivity, you can do one or more of the following: create a new Ad group for the keyword, rewrite some of the Headlines or Descriptions to be more relevant (must include this keyword), change the match type (for example, from phrase to exact), or add as a negative keyword.
Here we see the opposite example – a broader search term was shown for a specific keyword, and the CTR was almost 4 times lower than the campaign average. The logical solution was to add it as a negative.
Irrelevant Search Terms as Negative Keywords
Adding irrelevant search terms as negative keywords:
– this is the most common action that should be done regularly. In new accounts – almost every day, then as the dirty traffic decreases, you can increase the intervals to one week or more.
By dirty traffic, we mean brands or products of your competitors, informational queries (how to, what is), queries that are not related to your product (sneakers when you sell classic shoes, fabric conditioner for eczema for an online store selling children’s clothing for eczema) and many more – there are more cases than you can imagine.
In this case, it is important to use negative keyword match types correctly. An important difference from the match types of regular keywords is that negative keywords do not cover close variants, so you need to manually add synonyms, word forms and misspellings that you want to exclude.
Negative Keywords Lists Tips
And finally, a few more tips on adding search terms as negatives:
- do not add negatives at the campaign level, but create Negative keywords lists from them. Each list can be applied to several different campaigns at once.
- separate Negative keywords lists by type, for example, standard negatives (example, what is, how to, etc.), competitors, search terms that are not relevant to your products, lists by match types, etc. depending on the structure of your account.
- in some cases, keywords from several groups can generate the same search terms. In this case, add negatives at the group level to group are less relevant to them.
- add negatives at the account level. It will automatically apply to all search and shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. These include all search and shopping inventory in Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart, and Local campaigns. But before you add them, make sure they block irrelevant search terms for the entire account, as your account may have a structure where negatives for one campaign may be relevant for another campaign.
Analyzing the search terms report will help make your campaign more relevant, fully leverage your data, and ultimately lower your cost per conversion while increasing the number of conversions.
