About insights for responsive search ads

Search terms insights for responsive search ads show the top search categories where your ads appear and how that changes monthly. Use these insights to make better decisions when you optimize your creative strategy.

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Benefits

Use insights to identify how your customers are searching and engaging with your business on Google. In addition to that, you’ll have the information you need to:

  • Update your ad strength and replace low-performing assets
  • Build additional ads to reflect search categories where your ads appear
  • Improve ad performance when you expand campaigns to include keywords that are currently not covered in your account

Where to find search terms insights for responsive search ads

Follow the steps below to view your search terms insights for responsive search ads:

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the "Appearance" icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.
  1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon Campaigns Icon.
  2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu.
  3. Click Ads.
  4. Find and click on the relevant responsive ad.
  5. Click View asset details at the bottom of the relevant responsive search ad.
  6. Click View more on the Insights bar above the table.

How it works

Search terms insights for responsive search ads provide you with the search categories where your ads appeared. These insights help you to confidently update your assets and improve your ad performance.

Search terms insights

Search terms insights analyze the search terms where your ads have appeared in the past 56 days and groups them into intent based search categories and subcategories to provide you with key performance metrics for each.

  • Search categories: Auto-generated groupings of the search terms that drive traffic to your responsive search ad. These groupings take all search terms into account, including those not exposed in the search terms report due to privacy reasons. The groupings are categorized based on customer intent and product and service attributes.
    • Note: Search terms that have lower spend or don’t have an identifiable search category will be grouped together as ”other search terms.”
  • For each of the search categories identified, you’ll notice the following aggregated metrics:
    • Clicks
    • Clickthrough rate (CTR)
    • Conversions
    • Conversion rate
    • Conversion value
    • Impressions
    • Search volume (across all targeted countries)

1. Check which search categories are driving performance

An illustration that shows an example of Search terms insights in Google Ads.

  • The Search term insights card shows you the search term categories your customers use to find your business. The trends are reported monthly.
  • There are 2 metrics for each search category in the default view: conversions and search volume. (Note that you can select other metrics, such as clicks, clickthrough rate (CTR), conversion rate, conversion value, and impressions using the drop down in the “Conversions” column.)
  • In the parentheses, you'll notice the month over month % change for each metric, to view the direction of search trends.

2. Dive deeper into search subcategories

  • You can learn more about a particular search category by expanding a given search category to view its subcategories and more.
  • Note: Search terms that don’t have an identifiable search category are grouped together as “other search terms.”
  • Go over the search term details to view the full list of subcategories, associated performance metrics, and search terms. You can also get campaigns where the theme has appeared.

3. Update your campaign and creative strategy based on learnings

After you’ve identified which key search categories are driving the most demand toward your responsive search ad, you can leverage these insights to help shape your creative and optimization strategy.

  • Consider updating low-performing assets with assets that align more closely with the top search categories.
  • Consider shifting your creative or targeting strategy to align more closely with the top search categories.
  • Consider increasing your budget alongside your targeting changes to give your campaign enough headroom to capture this new set of users.

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