Use segments in your tables

Use segments to bring out what’s most important to you in your Search Ads 360 tables. With segments, you can split your data into rows, and isolate exactly what you want to see. Your segment choices vary depending on which table you're viewing, but may include periods of time, click type, or device.

This article explains how to use segments.

Instructions

How to segment your table’s rows

1. Sign in to your Search Ads 360 experience.
2. Use the page menu to navigate to the table you’d like to segment.
3. Click the segment icon  and select the data you want to isolate.
4. To remove a segment, click the segment icon   and select None.

Note: Columns may not show a value if you apply an incompatible segment. For example, conversion-based segments like “Conversion action” and “Conversion lag” work only with conversion-related columns like Conversions, All conv., and Conversion value. Hence, other columns like Clicks, Impr., and Cost will show a blank value “--” when a conversion-based segment is applied.

How to use different segment types to gain insights

Some segments can be found on almost every page in your account, while others are only available on particular pages. In some cases, you may need to download a report to apply a particular segment to your data. Here are the available segment types and how you can use them:

Ad destination

Ad destination describes where the user lands after clicking an ad. If you receive ads traffic to both your app and mobile website, you can use this segment to compare ad performance based on where users landed.

Segmenting by ad destination may not be compatible with all metrics, such as view-through conversions for video campaigns.

Click type

Use this segment to see which clicks resulted in visits to your website, or clicks on your phone number when your ad is shown on a mobile device (also called click-to-call).

Segmenting by click type may not be compatible with all metrics, such as view metrics for Google Ads video campaigns. 

Note: Click type may apply to multiple aspects of the same impression (for example, a click-to-call impression may show alongside a headline impression in the same ad). In this situation, you'll see "--" instead of summary totals in your downloaded report. A sum total would be inaccurate because it would double-count some of the impressions.

Conversions

 If you've set up conversion tracking, the segments "Conversion action," "Conversion category," and "Conversion source" can give you insight into conversion performance. For other advertising platforms, you can add “Floodlight activity group” or “Floodlight activity” columns to see conversion data. Learn more about Floodlight conversion tracking.  

Days to Conversion (Google Ads only)

The “Days to conversion” segment shows you the time difference between the customer's ad impression and the subsequent conversion. Use “Days to conversion” to understand how long you should wait for a given reporting day before you interpret your conversion numbers. By observing how long users might have taken historically to convert, you can also get a better idea about when to start a new ad campaign.

Device

Use this segment to compare performance across devices: computers, mobile phones, and tablets.

Keyword / Placement

Use this segment to compare how individual keywords are performing for particular ads. This segment is available on the Ads & assets page only.

Network (with search partners) 

Use this segment to compare Google Search Network and Google Display Network performance. This is frequently used to compare individual ads on the Ads & assets page.

Search terms match type

Segmenting a keyword by search terms match type can help you understand how actual search terms relate to the keyword you have. This type of segment can show you how your keyword performs in its broad, phrase, and exact matches.

You could use the segment to see the clicks, impressions, or CTR from each search term match type to a certain keyword. Then you could make changes to your keyword match type to improve performance. 

Example

Let's say you have a keyword, dog toys, that you've set to broad match, and a customer searches for toys to buy for dogs. The search term match type will be broad. If the customer searches for buy dog toys or buy dogs toys, the search term match type will be phrase. If the customer's search is dog toys or dogs toys, the search term match type will be exact.

Your keyword	Search term	Search terms match type
dog toys	toys to buy for dogs	Broad match
dog toys	buy dog toys buy dogs toys	Phrase match
dog toys	dog toys dogs toys	Exact match

Now, let's say you add the segment to your statistics table, and you see that your broad match keyword dog toys shows your ad for each search term match type (broad, phrase, and exact). Based on how dog toys performs for each search term match type, you might decide to increase or decrease your bid for the keyword.

Keep in mind

Even if you choose not to show your ads for close variants of your exact match and phrase match keywords, you might still see an increase in the number of exact and phrase search term match types. For example, if your keyword list includes the broad match keyword dog toys, and someone searches for dog toy, we'll identify that search term match type as exact since dog toy is a close variant of dog toys.

Special category (Google Ads only)

The "Special category" segment is available when you download a report for your automatic placement performance on the Google Display Network. It displays two types of pages that have shown your ads: error pages and parked domain sites.

Time

Use this to split your statistics table into rows based on the period of time you select. If you're requesting a substantial amount of data, you may get a message instructing you to download a report.
Options include:

• Day of the week (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday...)
• Day (Wed., December 21, 2011 for example)
• Week
• Month
• Quarter
• Year
• Hour of day

Top vs. Other (Google Ads only)

Apply the "Top vs. Other" segment to your statistics tables to find out where your ad appeared on Google's search results pages and search partners' pages. Segmenting your data by "Top vs. Other" can help you optimize your search campaigns to serve your ads on the parts of the page that perform best for you.

How to interpret the data

• Google search: Top -- Your ad ran above the organic Google search results.
• Google search: Other -- Any text ads that don't appear directly above Google search results are categorized as "Google search: Other."
• Search partners: Top -- Your ad ran above the partner's organic search results on a search partners' page.
• Search partners: Other -- Ads that don't appear directly above partner search results are categorized as "Other."
• Google Display Network -- Your ad ran on the Google Display Network.

Related links

• Customize your performance data
• View performance across campaign types