View performance by content category

Google automatically assigns predefined categories to the pages on your site based on the content of the pages. When applicable, the categories are organized into a three-level hierarchy. For example, you might see these category levels depending on the content on your site:

• Top level: Shoes
  • Second level: Outdoor
    • Third level: Sneakers
    • Third level: Hiking boots
  • Second level: Casual
    • Third level: Flats
    • Third level: Pumps

You can view the performance and cost of dynamic search ads that direct traffic to specific categories.

Once you know how effective your dynamic-search advertising is at driving customers to specific categories of content on your site, you can set up or modify existing dynamic targets that identify categories on your site. For example:

• For high-margin categories with low amounts of traffic, you might create dynamic targets for those categories and increase bids for those targets.
• For low-margin categories with high advertising cost, you might create negative dynamic targets to prevent Google from displaying ads for those categories.

To view dynamic-search ad performance by content category:

1. Navigate to a Google Ads campaign that is set up for dynamic search ads, or a dynamic ad group.

   Steps for navigating to a campaign

   1. In the left navigation panel, click All accounts.
      What if the left navigation pane isn't visible?

   2. Click the navigation bar to display navigation options.

   3. In the "Agency" list, click on the agency that contains the advertiser. You can search for an agency by name or scroll through the list.

   4. In the "Advertiser" list, click on the advertiser that contains the engine account.

   5. In the "Account" list, click on the engine account that contains the campaign.

   6. In the "Campaign" list, click on the campaign.

   7. Click Apply or press the Enter key.

   Search Ads 360 displays the campaign page.

2. Click the Targets ▾ tab and select Dynamic ad targets. 
3. Click Category search terms.
4. By default, the report displays top-level categories, which includes metrics from second and third-level categories. To view metrics for lower-level categories, select a level from the View: Top-level categories list, which appears above the performance summary graph.

Seeing an empty category report?

The category report may be empty if your site is too small, or if Google hasn't crawled your site yet.