Discover which words people actually searched for, so you can identify your most and least useful traffic in Google Ads.

Check the Search Terms report regularly to find out what people actually searched for

The Ad Grant is free in-kind advertising, a donation by Google. But even so, your charity shouldn’t waste this valuable asset. Target your ads as effectively as possible, to reach the right people. Choose relevant keywords to target people who are likely to convert; and use the Search Terms report to discover what people had actually searched for that led to them visiting your website.

Navigate to Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms. You should see this report. You can view all search terms across the entire account, or just for a specific campaign or ad group. Choose a date range that makes sense: I usually look at the last 90 days.

Focus on the searches that had the most impressions. The ones that rarely get searched don't matter. Click the top of the Impressions column to sort them in order from high to low. There's plenty of useful data in columns so you can compare CTR, CPC etc for individual search terms. You can also add a filter to search for specific words.

Add the column for Keyword. By default that's not displayed but it's important contextual information. You might spot a trend: for example, one keyword that's leading to irrelevant traffic.

The screenshot shows the search terms for an international aid nonprofit's brand keywords, and it highlights a problem: people have been searching for the Canadian nonprofit, not the US one. I'm sure that H&I Canada would not appreciate us taking traffic meant for them.

Note the action we took: we excluded the search term. That means we added it as a negative keyword.

How to prevent off-mission and irrelevant searches

1. Change the keyword match type

Sometimes a broad match keyword triggers a lot of irrelevant traffic, because Google matches it too loosely to similar-seeming search terms. If that's happening, switch it to phrase match.

3. Remove the keyword

What if the keyword isn't even that relevant to your mission? Remove it.

2. Add negative keywords

Negative keywords prevent ads getting shown to the people who are not seeking your information, but are using similar words to your chosen keywords. Essentially, you’re filtering out the people searching for information that’s in an incorrect context. Doing that can help to raise CTR. In the example screenshot above, we added several negative keywords, specifically:

• humanity and inclusion canada (as an exact negative)
• humanité et inclusion canada (as an exact negative)
• canada (as a broad negative)

I can be fairly certain that no-one searching Google for a phrase that includes the word "canada" ought to trigger one of the US nonprofit's ads to be shown.

You can select the box beside a search term then click Add as negative keyword in the blue bar. You'll be asked whether you want the exclusion to be at campaign or ad group level, and you can edit the keyword (including changing its match type) before saving.

Beware of adding broad negative keywords carelessly. Context can be tricky. What if a US animal sanctuary ran ads for donations to save Canada geese? Then it wouldn't make sense to use canada (the country) as a negative.

I sometimes add words like "free" as broad match negatives, because from experience I know that people searching for anything free rarely convert.

And if I see competitor nonprofits' brand names in searches, I always add those as negative keywords. It's the polite thing to do.

How to see the list of negative keywords

Simply go to Campaigns > Audiences, keywords and content > Search keywords then click the Negative search keywords tab. You should see a list of negative keywords, what whether they were added at campaign or ad group level, their match type, and which campaign or ad group they were applied to. They can be removed if wished, or you can click the blue plus symbol to add more.

Real examples of negative keywords

Here are a few examples of search terms I spotted on the Ad Grant account of a wildlife conservation charity.

In a campaign about the plight of endangered wolves: werewolf facts.

We added "werewolf" as a broad match negative keyword. We also added the word "facts" as a broad match negative keyword at campaign level, but only after first establishing that across the account people searching for "facts" rarely converted.

In a campaign seeking donations to save pangolins from being trafficked: where to buy a pangolin.

Definitely not what we’re promoting! We added the word "buy" as a broad negative keyword at ad group level only. We were also running ads for the nonprofit's online shop, so we wouldn't want to accidentally block people searching for the shop.

In a campaign to protect rare ducks from having their eggs stolen: how to poach a duck egg.

A tricky one. The account has plenty of keywords about poaching animals, but not "poaching" in the context of cooking! So we couldn't adding "poach" as a broad negative keyword. We added several phrase match negatives (e.g. "poach a duck egg") instead, just to the specific ad group.

A simple way to manage negative keywords: maintain a negative keyword list

Normally, you add negative keywords individually or in bulk to a specific campaign or ad group. But there is a way to simplify the task of excluding irrelevant traffic from your ads.

Read this tutorial: support.google.com/google-ads/answer/2453983.

As always when evaluating performance, choose a date range that gives you enough data and matches the period you're most interested in.

Negative keywords and misspellings

As of June 2024 negative keywords now block misspellings. That means you don't have to add all those misspellings to your negative keywords. Just add the correct spelling in your negative keywords and it will block all misspellings too. You can remove any misspellings in your existing negatives to help keep your account tidy.

View the Dynamic Search Ads search terms report

You should also keep a regular eye on the Search terms report. This is where you discover what words people searched for that triggered your dynamic ads to be shown, and which landing pages Google promoted. Navigate to Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms. Sort this report by clicking the top of the Impressions column, so you see the highest volume terms first. As with other reports, you can add columns for the metrics that interest you.

Something you could easily miss: there's a drop-down to select whether you want to see search terms generally, or dynamic search terms, or dynamic search terms plus landing pages.

Negative dynamic targets

Not all traffic is useful. Don't fall into the trap of trying to spend as much of the daily budget as possible, even if most of the search terms are off-mission. Take steps to ensure that visits to the website are from relevant searches.

If your DSA are causing ads to be shown for a lot of search terms you consider to be irrelevant to your mission, or for pages you would prefer to not be promoted, check the box to the left of the search term. A blue bar will appear, allowing you to exclude either the search term by adding a negative keyword, or the landing page.

Updated: June 2024