How To Use The Search Terms Report To Improve Your Google Ads

If you are running Google Ads and you are not regularly reviewing your Search Terms Report, you are almost certainly paying for clicks that have nothing to do with your business. It is one of the most straightforward and yet consistently overlooked tools available to advertisers, and the data it provides can genuinely transform how your campaigns perform. Understanding how to use the Search Terms Report to improve your Google Ads is not a matter of advanced technical knowledge; it is a matter of discipline, curiosity, and knowing what to look for when you open it up.

The Search Terms Report shows you exactly what people typed into Google before clicking on your ad. Not the keywords you are bidding on, but the actual real-world search queries that triggered your ads. The difference between those two things is where a great deal of wasted budget tends to hide, and it is also where some of your best keyword opportunities are waiting to be discovered.

Understanding What The Search Terms Report Actually Shows You

When you set up a Google Ads campaign and add keywords, you are telling Google the kinds of searches you want to appear for. But depending on your match types, Google has varying degrees of freedom in deciding which actual search queries will trigger your ads. Broad match in particular gives Google a significant amount of latitude, and whilst this can help you reach a wider audience, it can also mean your ads appear for searches that are entirely irrelevant to what you offer.

The Search Terms Report bridges that gap. You can find it in Google Ads by navigating to your campaign, selecting the Keywords section, and then clicking on Search Terms. What you will see is a list of the precise queries that have generated impressions and clicks within your campaigns. Each row tells you the search term, the match type it was triggered by, how many clicks and impressions it received, and what you spent on it. This is where the truth of your campaign performance lives.

Identifying Wasted Spend With Irrelevant Search Terms

The first and most important thing to do when you open the Search Terms Report is to look for queries that are clearly unrelated to your product or service. If you are a solicitor specialising in conveyancing and your ad is appearing for searches like "how to write a will yourself" or "legal aid near me," you are spending money on traffic that is unlikely to convert. Those clicks cost you just as much as the relevant ones, and they are dragging down your overall campaign performance.

Once you identify these irrelevant terms, you add them as negative keywords. This tells Google not to show your ads when someone types that phrase. Over time, building a robust negative keyword list is one of the most effective things you can do to protect your budget and improve your return on ad spend. It is not a one-time job either; it is something you should be doing on a regular basis, ideally weekly when campaigns are new and at least monthly once they have matured.

You can add negative keywords at the keyword level, the ad group level, or the campaign level, depending on how broadly you want to exclude a term. For terms that are never going to be relevant to your business regardless of the campaign, adding them at campaign level or even to a shared negative keyword list makes sense. Google's own documentation on negative keywords provides a useful reference for understanding how different match types apply to negatives as well.

Finding New Keyword Opportunities You Had Not Considered

The Search Terms Report is not just about removing the bad; it is equally valuable for uncovering the good. Occasionally you will spot a search query in the report that is converting well, that you had not thought to bid on directly, and that is not currently covered by any of your existing keywords. This is an opportunity.

When you find a term like this, you can add it as an exact match or phrase match keyword to the relevant ad group. By doing this, you give yourself more control over how that term is matched, how much you bid on it, and which ad it triggers. Rather than relying on a broader keyword to sweep it up, you are actively targeting it with intent. Over time this approach helps you build campaigns that are more precise, more efficient, and better aligned with the way your audience actually searches.

It is worth paying close attention to long-tail search terms in particular. These are the more specific, multi-word queries that tend to indicate a searcher who knows what they want. They often come with lower competition and, in many cases, a higher likelihood of conversion because the person searching has a clearer intent. The Search Terms Report is one of the best places to find these naturally occurring long-tail opportunities.

Reviewing Search Terms By Performance Metrics

Not all search terms in the report deserve the same level of attention, and sorting or filtering by performance metrics helps you prioritise where to focus. If you sort the report by spend, you can immediately see which queries are consuming the most budget. If you then cross-reference that with conversions, you can identify which high-spend terms are earning their place and which are simply burning through your money without delivering results.

Similarly, sorting by conversions will show you your best-performing search terms, giving you the clearest possible signal of what your customers are actually searching for when they are ready to take action. This kind of insight should be informing not just your keyword strategy, but also your landing pages, your ad copy, and potentially your broader content and SEO approach. The data in this report has a reach that extends well beyond the campaigns themselves.

It is also worth looking at the click-through rate for individual search terms. A term with a very low click-through rate but high impressions may suggest that your ad is not particularly relevant to that query, and it could be worth either improving the ad for that intent or adding the term as a negative if it consistently underperforms.

Aligning Search Terms With Your Ad Groups

One of the more advanced ways to use the Search Terms Report is to assess whether the queries triggering your ads are actually being sent to the most relevant ad group. In a well-structured campaign, each ad group should contain tightly themed keywords, and the ads within that group should speak directly to the intent behind those keywords. When a search term from one topic is triggering an ad from a loosely related ad group, the user experience suffers and your Quality Score can take a hit as a result.

If you notice that certain search terms would be better served by a different ad group, or that they represent a theme you have not yet created an ad group for, this is a strong signal to revisit your campaign structure. Google Ads rewards relevance at every level, from the keyword to the ad to the landing page, and the Search Terms Report gives you the visibility to maintain that relevance with real data rather than assumptions.

Making The Search Terms Report Part Of Your Regular Routine

The advertisers who see consistent improvement in their Google Ads performance are rarely the ones who set campaigns up and walk away. They are the ones who engage with their data regularly and make incremental improvements over time. The Search Terms Report should be a fixed part of your campaign management routine, not something you dip into occasionally when things go wrong.

Every review of the report is a chance to tighten your targeting, reduce wasted spend, discover new opportunities, and build a deeper understanding of how your audience searches. That understanding compounds over time, and it is what separates campaigns that merely run from campaigns that genuinely perform.

If you have not looked at your Search Terms Report recently, that is the place to start. Open it up, sort by spend, look at what is converting, and begin removing what is not. It is one of the clearest windows into the real behaviour of your potential customers, and using it consistently is one of the most practical and impactful things you can do to improve your Google Ads.