Search Terms

What Are Search Terms?

A search term, otherwise known as a search query, is the word or phrase someone enters into a search engine, such as Google. A search term often contains (or is itself) a keyword: a word or phrase search marketers bid on in their search campaigns and try to rank for in the organic search results.

Paid Search Marketing

Google’s paid search advertising platform is called Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) and it is a pay-per-click (PPC) system. This means that a given advertiser pays Google a small fee every time one of its ads is clicked by a Google user.The ads you see when using Google depend on the search term you enter. More accurately, the ads depend on the keywords you enter. Essentially, an advertiser identifies the words and phrases (known as keywords) that are relevant to its business. Then, the advertiser declares a bid for each relevant keyword. A bid is the maximum amount of money the advertiser will pay per click for ads linked to a given keyword.

For example, Nike will identify “running shoes” as a keyword and bid, say, $5 per click. Then, when a consumer enters the search term “mens running shoes,” Google runs an automated auction that involves every advertiser, including Nike, that has bid on keywords connected to “mens running shoes.” In the end, the winners of the auction get the top advertising spots. 

To be succinct: search terms carry keywords, and keywords are at the core of paid search marketing (or PPC, or Google Ads).

About the search terms report

Use the search terms report to know how your ads performed when triggered by actual searches within the Search Network. So that’s why Search Terms triggering keywords Consumer interest insights analyze the search terms where your ads have appeared in the past 56 days, grouping them into themes and subthemes to provide you with key performance metrics for each. You may notice some differences between the data shown on the consumer interest insights compared to the search terms report.

•Conversions: The way the conversions are processed differs between the consumer interest insights and the search terms report. You may notice slight differences between the 2 surfaces due to conversion lag.

•Search subthemes and queries: Some search terms that don’t have enough query activity are omitted from the search terms report in order to keep with our standards on data privacy. Consumer interest insights account for these low volume queries by grouping them into their relevant subthemes where applicable, or aggregating them as “other queries”, without exposing the queries themselves.

Benefits

The search terms report provides insight into the searches that trigger your ads and how those searches are performing. This report also helps you discover new ideas for creative and landing page content to align with what your customers are looking for.

What’s the difference between a search term and a keyword? A search term is a word or set of words a person enters when searching on Google or one of our Search Network sites. A keyword is a word or set of words that Google Ads advertisers can add to a given ad group so that your ads are targeting the right audience.

Example: David is looking to buy a Valentine’s Day bouquet online. He types “red roses” into the search box on Google. “Red roses” is the search term. Let’s say you’re the owner of an online flower business and manage a Google Ads account. Since you’ve included the word “roses” as a keyword in your Google Ads campaign, your ad may be eligible to show on David’s search results page.

View your search terms report

To view your search terms report, follow these steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account.
2. Click All Campaigns in the navigation pane on the left, then click Keywords in the page menu.
3. Click Search terms from the list under the “Keywords” menu.

You’ll see data on the search terms that have been used by a significant number of people and have triggered impressions and clicks.

You can also use the following features:

Columns button	Alter your search terms report and modify which columns show. Allows you to add, remove or reorder the columns in your report. You can choose to save your column set and apply these changes.
Download button	Download the data in your report. Choose the format to download the data from the list that appears when you click on it.
Segment button	Segregate the table into time, conversions, device (the ad was shown in) or Networks.
Expandbutton	Expand the table of your search terms report. Go back to the previous view by clicking on the collapse button.

You can modify your report to view the list of search terms that triggered your ad for your entire account, or specific campaigns or ad groups. In the previous AdWords experience, this feature could be accessed by clicking the “Dimensions” tab, then clicking “View”, and selecting “Search terms” from the drop-down menu. In the new Google Ads experience, this feature is accessed by clicking the reporting icon , then selecting “Predefined reports” from the drop-down menu.

Note that while the same information for individual keywords is available when viewing the search terms report this way, you can’t add keywords or negative keywords directly from the report. In addition to search results pages, your ads on our search partners may also appear on site directory pages, or other pages related to a person’s search. The search terms in these instances may appear longer than normal or may be formatted differently, depending on the structure of a particular site or page.

How it works

The search terms report is a list of search terms that a significant number of people have used, and that resulted in your ad being shown. Depending on your keyword matching options, the search terms listed might be different from your keyword list.

The “Match type” column tells you how closely the search terms that triggered your ads on Google are related to the actual keywords in your account. By checking which match types are working well for which keywords and searches, you can refine match types for all your keywords so that only the right searches cause your ad to show. The “Keyword” column tells you which of your keywords matched someone’s search term and triggered your ad. This column doesn’t show by default. To learn how to modify columns, refer to View your search terms report.

Manage your keywords based on search terms data

Use your search terms data to make changes to your keywords that can have a positive impact on your performance. Here are some ideas: 

If a search term isn’t relevant enough to the products or services you offer, add it as a negative keyword. By adding irrelevant search terms as negative keywords, you can prevent your ad from showing to people who are looking for something you don’t sell. For example, if you sell eyeglasses, and you noticed that the search term “wine glasses” is triggering your ads, you might want to add “wine” as a negative keyword.

Edit your match type (namely, broad, phrase, exact, or negative) for existing keywords. The “Match type” column can help you understand how keyword match type is affecting your ad performance.

We recommend using Smart Bidding, which incorporates a wide range of contextual signals to set bids for each auction and help maximize your performance.