About segmenting reports

Most reports in Search Ads 360 enable you to understand the overall performance of an advertiser, engine account, campaign, and so on. To drill down and uncover subtleties in the data that may reveal deeper insights, you can segment a report.

Example: View ad and keyword performance at the same time

You can use segments to see how each ad/keyword combination is performing:

• Break down your keywords by the ads the user clicked after using the keyword as a search term:

  On the Keywords tab, click the Segment button in the toolbar above the performance summary graph, select Ad, and click Apply.

• Break down your ads by the keywords the user searched on before clicking the ad:

  On the Ads tab, click the Segment button in the toolbar above the performance summary graph, select Keyword, and click Apply.

Example: Use segments to drill down

For example, the Actions column in a keywords report initially displays the total number of action conversions that occurred on all device types and that were recorded by all Floodlight activities.

Keyword	Ad group	Match type	Actions
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	10

If you want to dig deeper into this data, you can segment the report by Floodlight activity. If four Floodlight activities are set up for your advertiser, each keyword will be split into four rows. Each row displays the metrics that were recorded by a single Floodlight activity.

Keyword	Ad group	Match type	Floodlight activity	Actions
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Thank you page	0
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Request catalog	2
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Locate store	5
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Check store inventory	3

For even more details, you can also segment by device type and see if the conversions occurred on desktops, tablets, or mobile devices. (Reports with Floodlight segments only include rows for objects with conversions.)

Keyword	Ad group	Match type	Floodlight activity	Device type	Actions
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Thank you page	Desktop	0
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Request catalog	Desktop	1
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Request catalog	Tablet	1
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Locate store	Desktop	1
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Locate store	Mobile	3
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Locate store	Tablet	1
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Check store inventory	Desktop	2
red shoes	Shoes	phrase	Check store inventory	Tablet	1

If you download the report, the data in the download will be segmented as well.

Why are some segments missing?

Segments appear in reports only if there's data associated with the segment.

For example, if you segment a campaign report by device type, each campaign will only show metrics for device types that contributed impressions, clicks, or conversions to the campaign.

This campaign generated clicks from all device types:

Device segment	Campaign	Clicks	Actions
Desktop	Shoes - Brand	500	100
Mobile	Shoes - Brand	200	25
Tablet	Shoes - Brand	100	20

 

However, this campaign only generated clicks on  mobile devices, so Tablet and Desktop do not appear for this campaign:

Device segment	Campaign	Clicks	Actions
Mobile	Shoes - Comparison	400	60

Known issue

If you specify segments that return large amounts of data (such as segmenting by day when the report range is set to a long period of time, or specifying many segmentations in a report that already shows a large amount of data), it might take a long time to display data in the report or you might see an error.

Ready to get started?

Segment a report.