Low search volume

A status that's given to a keyword with very little to no search history on Google.

Important: The keyword will be inactive until its search traffic increases, when the keyword can start triggering your ads to appear.
  • Keywords marked as 'Low search volume' are associated with very little search traffic on Google, an indication that they're not very relevant to most customers' searches.
  • If the number of search queries for these keywords increases even a small amount, they'll be reactivated and will start triggering your ads to show again. Our system checks and updates this status regularly.
  • For example, the keyword might be considered too specific or obscure, or it was misspelled significantly. Keeping these keywords out of the ad auction helps Google Ads serve ads more efficiently and reduces the volume of keywords on our system. Before our system stops a keyword from joining the auction, it evaluates the number of searches on a given keyword worldwide over the past twelve months.
  • Low search volume status is unrelated to quality score, bid, or creatives, so editing these will not change the status.
    • When troubleshooting low search volume, it’s important to consider if your keywords are too specific, unclear or easy to misspell. Try removing the keyword and finding more ideas or broadening your match type. When projecting average monthly searches, Keyword Planner uses historical search trends over a 12-month period. Create a plan and view your keyword forecast to get more specific numbers. Learn more about Keyword Planner
  • There’s no negative impact of having keywords with low search volume status in your account, however you may want to remove them if you are hitting account limits. Learn more about your Google Ads account limits
  • You may see ads when searching for a keyword with low search volume status. For example, if your keyword is 'red and blue bicycles for sale', you could still see ads when you search for this on Google. This is because more general keywords, such as 'blue bicycles' could trigger an ad for that search.
  • When you have a keyword with low search volume, you have a few options:
    • You can choose to do nothing and wait for us to automatically check again in a week. If more people start searching using your keyword, then we'll reactivate it. This option can be particularly helpful if you're advertising a new brand, term or product.
    • Remove the keyword and use the Keyword Planner to find additional keyword ideas.
    • Change the keyword match type to something broader. For example, if the keyword is exact match, you could change it to broad match. Learn more about keyword matching options
    • Update the keyword to something less specific. For example, you could update the keyword 'gardenia flower delivery in spring NYC' to 'gardenia delivery NYC'.

Learn more about keyword status

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