When running Google Ads campaigns, understanding search terms is crucial for maximizing performance. By analyzing and refining search terms, businesses can improve ad relevance, reduce wasted spend, and boost conversion rates. However, many advertisers overlook this essential step, leading to inefficient ad spending.
Without proper search term analysis, businesses risk wasting ad spend on irrelevant searches, attracting the wrong audience, and missing high-converting opportunities.
Why Google Search Term Analysis Matters for SEO and Ads Performance
Google Ads operates based on keywords and search terms, but they are not the same.
- Keywords: The terms you bid on in your Google Ads campaigns.
- Search Terms: The actual words and phrases users type into Google that trigger your ads.
Understanding the difference is crucial because Google doesn’t always match search terms to keywords perfectly. Without regular analysis, your ads could be showing up for irrelevant queries, leading to wasted ad spend.
By analyzing search terms, advertisers can:
- Identify high-performing terms that bring in valuable traffic.
- Exclude irrelevant queries to avoid wasted spend.
- Refine keyword targeting to attract the right audience.
- Improve Quality Score, leading to lower CPC (Cost-Per-Click).
Without regular search term analysis, businesses may unintentionally pay for irrelevant clicks, reducing ROI and ad efficiency.
How to Analyze Google Search Terms Effectively
Analyzing search terms isn’t just about looking at a list of queries—it’s about understanding user intent, identifying patterns, and making data-driven decisions. To truly optimize Google Ads performance, advertisers should focus on key performance metrics and refine their keyword strategy accordingly.
1. Focus on High-Volume, High-Intent Search Terms
Not all search terms carry the same value. Some queries generate significant traffic but lack conversion potential, while others – often long-tail search terms – drive highly engaged users.
To identify high-value search terms, consider these factors:
- Search volume – Does the term consistently bring in traffic?
- Conversion rate – Are users taking action after clicking?
- Cost-efficiency – Is the CPA reasonable for this term?
High-intent search terms (e.g., “buy running shoes online”) tend to convert better than generic queries (e.g., “best running shoes”), so prioritizing them in your bidding strategy can improve campaign performance.
As Google’s advertising landscape evolves, Performance Max (PMax) campaigns are gaining popularity. However, Google Ads currently limits access to search term data for PMax campaigns, making optimization challenging.
You can also reach a recently published blog post dedicated to PMax Search Term Analysis.
2. Detect and Eliminate Wasted Ad Spend
One of the biggest challenges in Google Ads is wasting budget on irrelevant search terms. Many advertisers unknowingly waste 25% or more of their Google Ads budget on irrelevant search terms according to Wordstream. Without active search term monitoring and exclusion, businesses end up paying for clicks that will never convert.
A study by HubSpot found that 61% of marketers say generating quality leads is their biggest challenge. Allowing irrelevant searches to trigger your ads only amplifies this challenge, resulting in.
Advertisers often find that a significant portion of their spend goes toward queries that either:
- Have high impressions but low CTR – This suggests that users see your ad but don’t find it relevant, leading to wasted exposure.
- Have high clicks but no conversions – These terms drain your budget without delivering results, meaning they need to be excluded as negative keywords.
- Come from overly broad match types – If your broad match keywords are pulling in irrelevant or unrelated queries, it may be time to adjust match types or refine targeting.
While search term analysis is essential, doing it manually across multiple campaigns every day is nearly impossible. For advertisers managing large-scale campaigns with thousands of search terms, manually identifying high-value terms and filtering out wasted spend can be time-consuming and inefficient. That’s where Adsby’s Search Term Analyzer comes in.
- AI-driven automation instantly detects high-performing and wasteful search terms
- Smart filtering helps identify patterns and trends across campaigns
- Bulk exclusion feature allows advertisers to eliminate irrelevant queries in one click
Instead of spending hours manually reviewing search term reports, let Adsby’s Search Term Analyzer do the work for you, helping you save time, reduce wasted spend, and improve your Google Ads performance effortlessly.
3. Common Mistakes in Search Term Analysis
One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is not having enough time to check search term performance daily. Since Google introduced broad match keywords, campaigns have started attracting traffic from a wide variety of search terms—some relevant, but many completely unrelated.
The result? Campaigns can burn through their daily budget quickly, often on low-quality, non-converting traffic. If advertisers don’t regularly analyze and refine their search terms, they risk:
❌ Unwanted, low-quality traffic that doesn’t convert
❌ Higher CPCs due to irrelevant queries driving up costs
❌ Wasted budget on searches that don’t match business goals
But here’s the challenge: Manually reviewing search terms every day is time-consuming, and making data-driven decisions on what to exclude or optimize is even harder.
With Adsby’s Search Term Analyzer, you don’t have to spend hours manually reviewing search terms. Adsby provides daily campaign optimizations, allowing you to:
- Automatically detect low-converting search terms with high CPCs
- Receive daily optimization suggestions to improve ad performance
- Easily exclude irrelevant traffic and protect your budget
In fact, Adsby has analyzed over 280K search terms and found that 85% of the suggested optimizations were successfully applied, leading to:
- Advertisers saw a 20-30% reduction in wasted ad spend by excluding irrelevant terms.
- More relevant traffic and higher conversion rates, around %15
- Better Google Ads performance with less manual effort.
These results highlight why automated search term analysis is essential for optimizing ad campaigns. Instead of struggling with manual search term analysis, let Adsby automate the process and help you avoid one of the most common mistakes in Google Ads optimization.
Final Thoughts: Get the Most Out of Google Search Term Analysis
Search term analysis is one of the most overlooked yet powerful strategies in Google Ads optimization. A well-structured approach to search term management can improve conversion rates, reduce wasted ad spend, and enhance overall campaign efficiency. However, many advertisers struggle to keep up with this process due to time constraints, ever-changing search patterns, and Google’s broad match behavior.
By focusing on high-volume, high-intent search terms, businesses can allocate their budget more effectively and attract the right audience. At the same time, detecting and excluding irrelevant search terms is just as crucial—campaigns that don’t actively manage their search terms risk burning through their daily budget on low-quality clicks and non-converting traffic. This is especially true in the era of broad match keywords, where Google’s algorithm can sometimes match ads to unexpected and unrelated searches.
The reality is that manually analyzing search terms daily for multiple campaigns is nearly impossible. Reviewing thousands of search queries, identifying wasteful spend, and making optimizations require significant time and expertise. That’s where Adsby’s Search Term Analyzer comes in.
Adsby automates the search term analysis process, ensuring that campaigns remain optimized without the need for constant manual oversight.