Google recently added a really nice new report to AdWords called the Search Query Report. Well, it's a few months bkac but I'm posting about it for the first time so you'll excuse me for saying 'recently' in that context :)

The real beauty of this report is that it shows you the keywords that are actually being searched for that trigger your ads to appear. You can add the usual fields like impressions, clicks, ctr, etc - which means you can see the effectiveness of your ads against the actual keywords that are being used, rather than just the ones you are listing or the ones you think are effective.

This is particularly useful if you are using a mix of match types - exact, broad, phrase - as the latter two can result in a wide variety of keywords triggerin your ads.

What this report allows you to do is to add negative keywords for those keywords and phrases that are:

1). Irrelevant to the product or service you are offering, and/or
2). Generating a high number of click-throughs but a low number of conversions

Doing this on a regular basis should result in your account performing all the better as your ads will no longer appear for those keywords once they are activated as negative keywords. As usual, match types apply to negative keywords as well as regular ones so be careful how you apply those negatives :)

For high budget, high clickthrough accounts I recommend this report is run and actioned at least once per week.

Labels: adwords, match types, negative keywords, reports, search query reports