Understanding The Search Terms Report
Use the Search terms report to see how your ads performed when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network. Identify new search terms with high potential, and add them to your keyword list.
Look for search terms that aren’t as relevant to your business, and add them as negative keywords. This can help you avoid spending money showing your ad to people who aren’t interested in it.
What’s the difference between a search term and a keyword?
A search term is the exact word or set of words a customer enters when searching on Google.com or one of our Search Network sites. A keyword is the word or set of words that AdWords advertisers create for a given ad group to target your ads to customers.
What Is The Search Terms Report?
Use the Search terms report to see how your ads performed when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network… A keyword is the word or set of words AdWords advertisers create for a given ad group to target your ads to customers.
How to Spot Negative Keywords?
Adwords Search Terms Report: Running this report shows the searches people make in Google before clicking on your adverts.
Sort these searches by the highest cost to lowest cost and identify searches with Low CTR, low conversion rate, and low average session duration compared to the account average or low conversion rate or no conversions at all.
Viewing your Search Terms Report:
Sign in to your AdWords account.
Click the Campaigns tab.
Click the Keywords tab.
Click the Search terms button.
Below is a screenshot of what you are looking for:
You’ll see data on which search terms triggered impressions and clicks. To download the data in a report, click the download button.
After you run this report, there are a few things you can use the data for, including:
Add search terms that are performing well to your ad group as keywords.
Adjust your bids — the search terms that appear in the search terms report are receiving traffic, so you will want to make the most of those.
If you realise a search term isn’t relevant enough to the products or services you offer, add it as a negative keyword.
Select the correct match type (e.g. broad, phrase, exact, or negative) for existing keywords.
Further reading: Understanding AdWords “Match Types” To Win Online
Please note: Bear in mind that you’ll only see search terms that were used by people at least eight hours ago and have either received clicks in the past 30 days or have been searched for by a significant number of people.
Any search terms that did not meet this criteria will be added up in the ‘Other search terms’ row.
I really hope this post helped. Have I missed anything though? Drop me a line in the comments section below!
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Phil Adair
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