How to find and analyze your Google Ads Search Terms Reports
Keywords vs Search Terms
To understand why the Search Terms Report is so valuable, it’s vital to first understand the difference between Keywords and Search Terms.
Keywords are used to target your ads to the right audience. Keywords come from you, the advertiser. You may decide to target keywords like “botox”, “laser hair removal”, “vaginal rejuvenation”, etc.
Search Terms come from people who are using Google. They are words that people actually type into Google to trigger your ads.
When deciding whether to show your ads to a person, Google compares the keywords in your campaigns and the search terms typed in by a user, and checks to see how closely related they are.
If there is a close match, your ads will go through an auction process that will determine whether the ad is shown, as well as your ad’s position on the page.
The Value of Insights from Search Terms Reports
The Search Terms Report is extremely valuable for ensuring that your Search ads are showing to the right people.
It has three primary functions:
1) Refining your keyword list: You can see if your initial assumptions about your keyword list were wrong, and if some keywords need to be removed and others added.
2) Generating new campaign ideas: Let’s say you were running a campaign with keywords for “biote” and “hormone therapy”. Your Search Terms Report may show that very often your ads are showing up when people type in “bioidentical hormone therapy” into Google.
This could be a great chance to create a new campaign with keywords and ad verbiage specifically focused on “Bioidentical Hormone Therapy”, to better appeal to those specific users.
3) Figuring out which Negative Keywords need to be added to your campaigns: When running a campaign for “laser wrinkle treatments”, you may find that your ads are often showing for people typing in “home remedies for wrinkles” or “amazon wrinkle cream”.
These people are not likely to convert, and it’s a perfect opportunity to add those search terms as Negative Keywords, so that your ads no longer show for them.
How to Access the Report
Firstly, you want to select the campaign for which you would like to view the Search Terms Report:
1) Select the campaign you’d like to analyze:
2) Select an Ad Group within the campaign. If you only have one ad group, then you can skip this step.
3) In the grey menu, under the Keywords dropdown, select “Search Terms”.
4) You can now view the Search Terms that triggered your ads to show
You can now see the actual words users typed into Google before seeing your ads, and make better decisions about how to structure your medical aesthetics campaigns.