How to read the Search Terms report: the weekly routine that pays for most PPC management

The Search Terms report lists the actual searches that triggered your ads, what each one cost and what each one brought back, and reading it once a week is the single highest-return habit in Google Ads. Sort it by cost, read every row that spent money without converting, and add what should not be there to a negative list; on a neglected account that first read alone usually removes a fifth or more of the waste. It is also the best market research you will ever get for free, because it is what people typed, not what a tool estimated.

Where it is, and what the columns mean

In Google Ads, open a Search campaign, choose Insights and reports, then Search terms. Set the date range to the last seven days for the weekly read and the last ninety for the first read of a new account. The columns that matter are below; the rest can be hidden.

The weekly read, step by step

1. Sort by cost, descending. Read the top rows first; on most accounts the top twenty rows are a third of the spend.
2. For every row with cost and no conversions, ask one question: could this person have bought from us? A search for a job, a course, a manual, a free version, a town you do not serve, a product you do not sell, is a no. Note the word that gives it away.
3. Add each no to the right shared negative list, at the widest match type that will not block a search you want. Do it now, in the same sitting; a list of intentions is not a negative list.
4. For every row that did convert, ask whether it is already a keyword at exact match in the right ad group. If not, add it. If it converted in the wrong ad group, it is showing the wrong ad and landing on the wrong page, and moving it is a free improvement.
5. Read the match type column. If broad match rows dominate the no pile, the broad keywords need tightening or their negatives need a month of catching up.
6. Read the keyword column for the rows that surprised you. A keyword matching searches with a different intent is a keyword to change or to pin down with negatives.
7. Look at the row called other search terms, and at how much it spent. That row is the searches Google will not show you, and its size tells you how much of the account you cannot read.
8. Write down one thing the report told you about the business: a service people ask for that is not on the website, a town that keeps appearing, a phrasing customers use that your pages do not. That is next month's page.

The other search terms row

Since September 2020 Google has hidden the searches it considers too rare to show, grouping them into a single row under other search terms; it relaxed the threshold a little in 2021 but the row remains. On some accounts it is a few per cent of spend; on accounts running broad match against long, varied searches it can be a third. You cannot add negatives for searches you cannot see, so the size of that row is a measure of how much of the account is running on trust. Tighter match types shrink it, because the searches they let in are more common and more likely to clear the threshold.

Shopping and Performance Max

Shopping campaigns have a Search Terms report and it is longer than a Search campaign's, because the feed matches to anything Google considers relevant to the product. The same read applies: sort by cost, ask whether the searcher could have bought, add negatives, and note the searches for sizes or variants you sell that matched nothing, which is a feed problem rather than a campaign problem.

Performance Max does not show search terms as rows. It shows search categories in its insights, which are groups of searches with a total, and since 2024 it takes campaign-level negatives and brand exclusions. It is a report about themes, not queries, and it is the reason a Search campaign should run alongside Performance Max on any account that needs to know what people typed.

What the report tells you about the website

Read for a few months, the report is a description of your customers in their own words. The phrasing they use for your service is the phrasing your page headline should use. The questions they type before the service name are the questions the page should answer. The town names that keep appearing are the area pages that should exist. The product people ask for that you do not sell is either a product to stock or a negative to add, and the report cannot decide which; you can. We take one item from the report into the SEO or the landing page work every month, and it is the most reliable source of page ideas we have.

The ninety-day exercise for any account: open the report for the last ninety days, sort by cost, and count how many of the top fifty rows could never have bought from you. Multiply their cost by four to get a rough annual figure. That number is the case for the weekly read, made on your own data.