paid ads · playbook
Google Ads search terms report: how to find it, read it and act on it
Where the Google Ads search terms report lives now, what it hides for privacy, how Performance Max search terms work, and rules for turning terms into keywords or negatives.
Key takeaways
- The Google Ads search terms report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads, found under Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms.
- Google omits low-volume queries for privacy, so the report never accounts for all of your spend; search terms insights covers the hidden part as themes.
- Performance Max has its own search terms report, selected from the same report dropdown, with data from March 2023 onward.
- Decide each term with explicit rules: add as a keyword when it converts and is not already covered, add as a negative when it is clearly off-intent or burns spend with no conversions.
- Negatives in Performance Max only block Search and Shopping inventory; Display and YouTube need excluded content keywords.
The Google Ads search terms report lists the actual searches that triggered your ads, alongside the keyword that matched and its performance. You find it under Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms. It is the most direct view of what your money is buying, but it is not complete: Google hides low-volume queries for privacy, so part of every account’s spend never shows up as a named term.
Where is the search terms report in Google Ads?
In the current Google Ads interface:
- Select Campaigns in the left navigation.
- Open Insights and reports, then Search terms.
- Use the campaign and ad group selectors at the top to narrow the view, or stay at account level to see everything.
For Performance Max, the same page has a report dropdown: choose Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max.
Two practical settings:
- Show the Keyword column. It is hidden by default. Open the columns icon, choose Attributes, tick Keyword, and apply. Without it you cannot see which keyword pulled each term in.
- Use Report editor for custom cuts. Under Insights and reports, the Report editor has predefined search terms reports you can segment by campaign, ad group, device or date, then schedule or download.
What do the match type labels mean?
The Match type column describes how the search term related to your keyword, which is not always the keyword’s own match type.
| Label | What it means |
|---|---|
| Exact match | The search term is identical to your keyword |
| Exact match (close variant) | Same meaning and intent, such as a plural, misspelling or abbreviation |
| Phrase match | The search term contains your keyword |
| Phrase match (close variant) | A close variant of a phrase match |
| Broad match | The search term is a variation or related search |
Google notes a broad match keyword can show a narrower label, such as exact, when the query happens to match it exactly. Dynamic Search Ads and Shopping terms show no keyword and display “Exact” as the match type.
What does the search terms report hide?
Since a 2020 privacy update, the report is “a list of search terms that a significant number of people have used.” Terms without enough query activity are omitted “to comply with our standards on data privacy.” In 2021 Google restored some visibility for queries received from February 1, 2021 onward, but it has never published the threshold.
In practice this means:
- The report total is less than the campaign total. The gap is spend on queries Google will not name.
- The gap is bigger in long-tail accounts. B2B and technical niches, where many searches are unique, often see a large share of spend in the unnamed part. Google’s Ads Liaison has publicly addressed an advertiser report of most of a campaign’s spend sitting in the unnamed “other” search terms.
- Exact match does not save you. Close variants mean even exact match keywords can serve on queries you never wrote.
How to see the hidden part: search terms insights
Search terms insights, on the Insights page at account or campaign level, groups the search terms your ads appeared on into categories and subcategories with performance metrics. Google says these groupings take all search terms into account, including those not shown in the search terms report for privacy reasons. It is available for Search, Shopping and Performance Max campaigns.
Limits to keep in mind:
- It shows themes, not individual queries, so you cannot copy a term out of it.
- Category labels are generated from the last 56 days of data, so a category may include terms that have stopped serving or are already excluded.
- Conversion numbers can differ slightly from the search terms report because of conversion lag.
Use insights to find themes to block (for example a “jobs” or “free tutorial” subcategory eating spend), then write negatives that cover the theme.
How does the Performance Max search terms report work?
For years Performance Max only offered search term categories. Google announced a full search terms report for Performance Max in April 2025 and rolled it out to Performance Max campaigns over 2025; the data is also available through the Google Ads API (campaign_search_term_view).
What to know:
- Location: Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms, then choose Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max from the dropdown.
- Contents: search terms paired with landing pages and ad format, so you can see which queries led to Shopping ads versus text ads and which page they landed on.
- History: data starts from March 2023.
- Metrics caveat: Google advises prioritizing conversion data over clicks and impressions, because some Performance Max conversions happen without a click (especially on YouTube), which can make CTR or CPM look odd.
- Not included: store visits and store sales conversions.
Expect privacy thresholds to leave an unnamed remainder here too.
How do you act on search terms?
Google’s current help says you cannot add keywords or negatives directly from the report itself. Collect the terms from the report, then add them from the Keywords page (the Negative keywords tab for exclusions), from a shared negative keyword list, or in bulk with Google Ads Editor.
Decide each term with rules, not mood. A workable set for lead-gen accounts:
Add the term as a keyword when
- It has at least one conversion you trust (a real lead or sale, not a micro-conversion), and
- It is not already covered by an exact or phrase keyword in the right ad group, and
- You want separate control over its bid, ad copy or landing page.
Add it as exact or phrase match in the ad group whose ad and landing page best fit the intent. If it belongs to a new theme, create a new ad group rather than forcing it into the closest existing one.
Add the term as a negative when
- It is clearly off-intent: job seekers (“careers”, “salary”), students (“course”, “tutorial”, “pdf”), support queries from existing customers, competitors you do not want to bid on, unrelated products that share a word with yours.
- Or it has spent more than roughly 1.5 to 2 times your target CPA with zero conversions over a window long enough for your conversion lag (often 30 to 90 days in B2B).
Choose the narrowest match type that does the job. Block a single bad query with exact match; block a bad modifier everywhere with phrase or broad. Our negative keywords guide covers match types and levels in detail.
Leave it alone when
- It is relevant but has too little data. Watch it rather than react to a few clicks.
- It converts but costs more than target. That is a bid or landing page problem, not a negative.
Decision table
| Situation | Action |
|---|---|
| Relevant, converting, not a keyword yet | Add as exact or phrase keyword |
| Relevant, converting, already a keyword | No change; check bid and ad relevance |
| Off-intent, any spend | Add as negative (exact for one query, phrase/broad for a theme) |
| Relevant, no conversions, spend above 1.5-2x target CPA | Add as negative or move to a test ad group with its own budget |
| Relevant, little data | Watch |
| Competitor brand term | Decide deliberately; negative it if you do not run a competitor campaign |
| Your own brand term in a non-brand or PMax campaign | Add brand negatives or brand exclusions to keep reporting clean |
How often should you review search terms?
- New campaigns or new broad match: every few days for the first two weeks.
- Steady accounts: weekly for high spend, every two weeks for small accounts.
- Performance Max: at least monthly, plus a check of search terms insights for brand leakage.
Look at a window that covers your conversion lag. Judging B2B search terms on 7 days of data mostly measures noise.
What should you check in Performance Max specifically?
- Brand share. How much Performance Max search spend and conversions come from your own brand name. Inflated brand traffic makes PMax look better than it is.
- Overlap with Search. Terms that also appear in your Search campaigns. Exact match keywords in Search take priority over Performance Max when the query is identical, but phrase and broad share priority with search themes. See Performance Max vs Search.
- Where to block. Campaign-level or account-level negatives cover Performance Max Search and Shopping inventory only. To keep a theme off Display and YouTube, add excluded content keywords in the content suitability settings as well.
Common mistakes with the search terms report
- Treating the report as complete. Always note the unnamed share before drawing conclusions.
- Over-negating. Every negative also blocks future good queries that contain it. Prefer exact match negatives for one-off bad queries.
- Negating on clicks alone. A term with 20 clicks and no conversions in a B2B account with a 60-day sales cycle may still be your best term.
- Adding negatives that conflict with keywords. A negative that matches one of your own keywords stops that keyword from serving.
- Forgetting Performance Max. Negatives added only to Search campaigns do nothing for PMax.
Turning the weekly pass into a habit
The search terms pass is the single most valuable recurring Google Ads task and the easiest to skip. GTM Hacker’s paid ads reviews read search terms as part of a weekly review of each tracked campaign and propose negatives and keyword additions. Low-risk changes can be set to auto-approve per campaign; spend-affecting changes always wait for a person to approve. For the full review framework, see the Google Ads campaign review, and for a quick self-check, the free Google Ads audit.