Run a search term report

A search term report shows you what people are searching for when your ads are shown. When you connect these terms with impression and click data, you can see how your keywords match up to customers' searches, and refine your keyword and negative keyword lists for your ad groups.

A search term report shows what people are searching for when your ads are shown. With this impression, ad position and click data, you can refine your keyword and negative keyword lists for your ad groups. Learn more about keyword match types, and how to use them.

Here's an example: Let's say you're a small software company with an ad campaign using the keywords software development, software download, and school software. You run a search term report, and discover that the search term educational software download generates a lot of impressions for your ad. Impressions can lead to clicks, which can lead to sales, so you decide to add this keyword to your keyword list. The search term antivirus software downloads also results in many impressions, but your company doesn't make antivirus software. So you decide to add that term to your negative keyword list to filter out impressions you know won't help you.

Create a search term report on the Keywords tab

From the collapsible menu on the left, select All campaigns > Keywords > Search terms.
Select Download and then select the Format and Segment of the report.
Select Download.

Create a search term report on the Reports page

From the top menu, select Reports > Default reports > Performance > Search term.
Make any desired changes to the report's conditional formatting, date/time range, account scope, or columns.

Note

A Search term report includes only search terms that have had a significant number of clicks in the specified time period. This means the number of impressions listed in a search term report might be just a fraction of the total impressions seen in other performance reports (e.g., Keyword Performance report, Campaign Performance report, etc.).