The search terms report helps you discover the search terms that triggered your Performance Max ads, providing insights into user search behavior and its impact on your campaigns. You can also view insights about your ad formats and landing pages to better understand how your ads are appearing and performing.
Although conversion data is key, the search terms report helps identify which search terms resulted in conversions for a deeper understanding of performance. Learn more About the search terms report
On this page
- Benefits
- View the “Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max” report
- Keep in mind: Data, metrics, and exclusions
Benefits
The search terms report offers several benefits for Performance Max campaigns, including:
- Improved understanding of search terms: Gain insights into the actual search terms that trigger your ads. This includes terms that don’t necessarily lead to conversions.
- Deeper insights into ad serving: Leverage "Ad format" segmentation to view the ad type served for each search term, differentiating between "Shopping ads" and "Text ads". These details can help you analyze the impact of format-level brand exclusions.
- Performance transparency: Learn more about how combinations of search terms, headlines, and landing pages are performing to better understand your ad relevance and user experience.
- Enhanced negative keyword strategy: Identify irrelevant search terms. Add them as negative keywords to prevent your ads from showing for those searches.
- Refined assets: Discover new relevant search terms that are performing well and use this information to create new text assets geared towards your highest-performing search terms.
View the "Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max" report
To access the Performance Max segmentation and insights:
- Go to the Search terms report within the Campaigns menu
.
- From the dropdown menu, choose Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max.
This view displays the performance metrics associated with specific search terms and their corresponding landing pages and ad formats.
Keep in mind: Data, metrics, and exclusions
Use your search terms report to refine your keyword strategy and improve campaign performance.
Consider the following limitations and behaviors regarding data availability and keyword exclusions when using this report:
- Historical data: Data for the Performance Max search terms report is available starting from March 2023. Data prior to this date is not shown in the report.
- Metric prioritization: Prioritize conversion data over clicks and impressions when you evaluate performance max campaign performance. Since these campaigns are automated to drive conversions across various platforms, including YouTube, some conversions may occur without direct clicks or impressions. This can lead to high click-through rates (CTRs) or cost-per-thousand impressions (CPMs) that don’t reflect the true value of the campaign.
- Incompatible metrics: Store visits and store sales conversions aren’t available in the search terms report.
- Exclusion: The search terms report lets you block specific search terms from triggering your ads if you feel they aren’t relevant or otherwise desired for your brand. There are several types of inventory where users might search to trigger an ad that are shown in the Performance Max search terms report:
- Search and Shopping inventory: To stop ads from serving for a specific keyword on Search and Shopping inventory, apply negative keywords at the account or campaign level.
- Display and Video inventory: To stop ads from serving for a specific keyword on display and Video inventory, use excluded content keywords in the Content Suitability center to prevent your ads from showing on Display and Video inventory alongside irrelevant content.
