Review your Google Ads search terms to see what people were typing into Google when they saw your ad!

This is a crucial step when trying to determine where to save money in Google Ads and ensure your ads are only being seen for relevant searches.

If a search term IS relevant to what you offer and is responsible for leads or sales, then you can add that search term as a keyword to your account.

By doing this you will be increasing your visibility for search terms that you know have resulted in leads or sales.

On the other hand, if a search term IS NOT relevant for your business, then you can add that search term as a negative keyword to prevent your ads from showing up for that search in the future.

If you would like to get a comprehensive list of other simple but necessary Google Ads optimizations, then sign up to receive our Ultimate Google Ads Checklist.

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Video Transcription


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Hi, my name is Maura with Main Street ROI and if you’re not
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looking at your Search terms report on
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at least a monthly basis you might be
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missing out on a wealth of knowledge for
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your Google ads campaigns
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so what is a Search terms report it is
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basically exactly what it sounds like it
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is the Search terms people entered into
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Google to make your ads appear so as you
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can imagine this is an incredibly
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valuable tool you can see where your ads
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are appearing or for what Search terms
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and kind of determine whether or not
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they match up with your keywords or your
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campaign intent or you can also exclude
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them from the campaign as negative
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keywords if they don’t really match up
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so to get to your Search terms report
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you’re going to come over to the left
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side of your Google ads account under
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the keywords toggle it’ll be the third
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report down under Search terms when it
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comes up it does look very similar to
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how we actually look at our normal
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keywords the biggest differences are
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going to be this added slash excluded
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column as well as this match type column
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which is a little bit different than how
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we would use it for keywords
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so added slash excluded very simply
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added means that the search term is
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already in your campaign excluded means
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that it has been added as a negative
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keyword
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um if it doesn’t have either of these
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that’s totally fine not every keyword
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needs to be handled in one way or the
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other
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um you might still you know leave one as
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just a search term or none to see
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whether it might bring in more you know
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activity in the future or something like
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that and then match type this actually
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refers to the match type your search
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term is to your keyword so if we look at
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this first row up here we have an exact
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match keyword for bath fitters and the
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search term was bath fitters so that’s
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an exact match we know that that is
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already added into our campaign if we
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come down here we have a phrase match
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keyword for bathtub shower Remodel and
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someone
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um someone searched best tub to shower
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conversion companies so that is a close
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variant to the phrase match Google has
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kind of inferred that these mean very
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similar things
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um and in this case they got it right
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that could potentially be a keyword that
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you would want to add for the future or
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you might want to continue monitoring it
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if you’re more of a you know full
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remodel company and not necessarily just
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a conversion company so you really
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really have to think about what are the
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intent behind your ads what um what
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people are searching is it relevant for
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what you actually do
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um of course you could leave all these
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keywords here and not use negative
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keywords but that kind of leaves you
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open to losing some of your budget on
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people who are not actually interested
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in your services or may not even be
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searching for anything remotely having
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to do with Services they might just be
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looking for a product so it’s very
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important to use the search term report
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to help narrow down your campaigns to
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make sure that they’re best optimized to
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getting conversions that you want for
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your goals
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um My Little Pro tip for using the
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Search terms report one of my favorite
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ways to look at it is to navigate to the
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cost
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um and then look at which Search terms
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have cost us the month the most in that
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time period whether that’s a month or
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more and whether or not they have made
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any conversions so in this case if I see
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a keyword has cost me two hundred
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dollars in the last month but has not
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gotten me any conversions that might be
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something that I would potentially look
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at adding as a negative keyword to
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preserve budget for keywords that are
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more relevant or more impactful to the
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campaign
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so as you can see this is a ton of
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knowledge obviously there’s way more
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that you can go into you can look at um
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you know a bunch of different columns a
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bunch of different stats on these
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keywords but this is an incredibly
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valuable way to as I’ve said narrow down
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your campaigns further optimize it for
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exactly what your goal is
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um whatever conversions you may have
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defined
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um so if you found this video helpful I
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encourage you to look at your Search
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terms report at least on a monthly basis
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and if you’re struggling a little bit
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with ads feel free to reach out to our
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team of experts at Main Street ROI and
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we’d be more than happy to give you guys
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a hand
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thank you
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