Add the words people are searching for as keywords

Want to know your customer's search terms? Learn how to add search terms to your keyword list.

With Microsoft Advertising, you can research search terms and then add them to your keyword list. You can also use this feature to identify search queries that you want to avoid by creating negative keywords.

The difference between search terms and keywords

A search term is the word or phrase that customers enter when searching on Bing, AOL, Yahoo and their syndicated search partners. A keyword is the word or phrase you add to your Microsoft Advertising campaign to target your ads to customers.

Research search terms

You can get a list of search terms in three places in Microsoft Advertising. Each place shows the data a bit differently.

Where: Keywords tab (or from the main menu on the far left, click All campaigns, and then click >Keywords).
How: Select one or more keywords, click Details and then click Search Terms.
What you see: A list of search terms that have had a significant number of clicks in the last 30 days and the Other search terms row, which shows metrics for all search terms that had impressions but didn't have significant clicks in the last 30 days.
Where: Dimensions tab (or from the global menu at the top of the page, click Reports > Dimensions> Basic > Search Terms).
How: On the Show menu, select Search terms.
What you see: A list of search terms that have had a significant number of clicks in the last 30 days. This list is different than the Keywords tab because it doesn't have the Other search terms row.
Where: Search term report (or from the global menu at the top of the page, click Reports > Reports > Performance > Search terms).
How: On the Reports page in the left panel, select Search terms and then run the report.
What you see: A list of search terms that have had a significant number of clicks in the last 30 days. This list is different than the Keywords tab because it doesn't have the Other search terms row. Be aware that the search term report will have fewer impressions than the keywords report and the keywords tab because the search term report doesn't include the Other search terms data. The keyword tab and keywords report include all impressions.

Add search terms to your keyword or negative keyword list

From the menu on the far left, click All campaigns.
From the page menu, click Keywords.
Select one or more keywords and click Search Terms.
To add a term to your keyword list, select one or more terms, click Add as keywords.
To exclude keywords that aren't relevant to your business, select one or more terms, click Add as negative keywords.

Note

You can add negative keywords using the phrase keyword match type at the campaign level. If you do, be sure to run a negative keyword conflicts report after a day to identify any conflicts.