Refine your new keywords in Keyword Planner

To access Keyword Planner:

Your account must be using expert mode. You won’t be able to access Keyword Planner if your account is using smart mode.
You must complete your account setup by entering your billing information and creating a campaign. If you’re not yet ready to spend money, you can choose to pause your campaigns.

Keyword Planner lets you discover new keyword ideas for your Search campaigns. Once you create a list of keywords, the next step is to refine the ideas that are most relevant to your campaigns.

This article shows you how to narrow your list of keywords to find those most relevant to your business.

Instructions

1. Filter and refine by category

You can filter your results to get a better understanding of the potential success of specific keyword ideas. To edit filters, click the filter icon above the table of results, then select the filter that you wish to edit.

You can filter your results by keyword text, average monthly searches, top of page bid (low range), top of page bid (high range), competition, organic impression share, ad impression share or exclude keywords already in your account.

You can also refine your list using categories related to your keyword ideas. For example, if your keywords are related to running shoes, you may see a category for shoe colour.

All categories are selected by default. To narrow your search, untick the boxes next to the categories that you’d like to remove from your list of keyword ideas.

2. Narrow by location

Here's an example to help you understand how to use the targeting settings. Let's say that you want to show ads for your Cabo San Lucas resort to customers in Switzerland who speak French and are searching on Google and Google search partner sites. You can edit the settings in the Targeting panel above the graph to get keyword ideas and historical statistics for such a campaign.

Location settings: Enter a geographical location, including countries, territories, regions and cities in the box. Click 'Nearby' to get ideas for locations that are near the location that you entered. If you want to target globally, remove any locations that you've previously entered. Doing so will automatically set your targeting to "All locations".
Language settings: Enter a language in the box or scroll through the list of languages that you can get ideas for.
Network settings: Select 'Google' to get ideas for Google Search or select 'Google and search partners' to get ideas for Google Search, other Google search sites like Maps and Google search partner sites (sites that partner with Google to show ads).

3. Customise by date range

Paying attention to the calendar can be helpful if you’re running a seasonal campaign or looking for keywords that are trending on Google Search. That’s where the date range feature comes in. It lets you adjust the date range in order to see search volume trends over specific time periods, and get suggestions for keywords that are more relevant during certain times of the year.

4. Match seasonal trends

Let’s say that your business delivers flowers. Looking at your search volume trends, you notice that your keywords were most popular in February, the month of Valentine’s Day. You can use the date range feature to find other keywords that have been popular that month. Just click on the date field above the graph.

You can also use the date range feature with your traffic forecasts. For example, you could choose to get forecasts just for the month of February to plan for a Valentine’s Day campaign for your flower delivery business.

5. Break down into segments

Break down your keyword ideas to see their impact on specific segments. Here are all the ways that you can break down your results:

Mobile trends: Compare mobile trends to searches on all devices.
Breakdown by device: Break down your average monthly searches by computers, mobile devices with full browsers and tablets with full browsers.
Breakdown by location: See how many clicks your keywords get in each of your targeted locations.

Note

To get keyword ideas generated from your whole website, and not just from the single page you entered, add and then verify your site. If your account is managed, the account owner must add and verify site ownership. After you add and verify your site, it can take up to a month to see keyword ideas generated from your whole website.