AdWords Search Query Report
I get many comments from people suggesting that instead of using the advanced technique for finding negatives I suggest in this post it’s better to just stick to the search query report.
Here is my answer:
First it’s a myth that the search query report gives you search queries that don’t get clicks. It’s true that it shows the impressions but if a search query get impressions but no clicks you won’t see it.
To prove my point I took the following screenshot:
As you can see out of almost half a million impressions if I sort by clicks the report I get only 3 search queries that have zero clicks.
So if you really want to learn (and put as negatives) what are the irrelevant terms that you are getting impressions for but no clicks the recommendation of starting with a very generic ad is very effective.
Now when it comes to clicks I’m certainly not against using that report, but very often you’ll just see: “XX other unique queries” - something that would not happen if you analyze your server logs or use an analytics software.
Here are a myth I would like to debunk:
High CTR is not necessarily a good thing, by adding the right negatives you may actually be reducing your CTR when you add keywords that get many clicks but don’t convert, so don’t use CTR as a measure of success of adding negatives.
Summary of steps to EFFECTIVELY add negatives (and I’m saying adding negatives, not increasing CTR!)
- Use a very generic advert so that you get as many clicks as possible
- Discover negatives (words which are creating impressions but not converting)
- You can use your server logs, an analytics program or the search query report to see those search queries (ideally use all)
- Always add the negative, even if that word appeared just once, it may be the tip of the iceberg of plenty of impressions with very low CTR
I think that the Search Query Performance report is good for negative keywords that you may have missed. Aside from that, you really need to go all out and do research on negatives for each campaign.
It is but be careful as it’ll show almost only search queries that got clicks. I recommend a tool like ghostnegatives.com in order to discover negatives that never got a click.
1. How in the heck are we supposed to block every single keyword for campaigns that have 10’s of thousands of individual queries?
2. And assuming we start blocking 10,000 phrases in evwery campaign, is this really manageable? So hard to remember which negatives are added to which campaigns, etc…
3. And on another note, you emntion that adding keywords wont boost CTR. Can you explain how this is true? I mean, if I am blocking so many keywords, would not the relevance of the ad improve to the search query (generally speaking)?
To successfully add negatives on large kw campaigns you really need a tool like cutclick
I am wondering why are you not using the different keyword matching options? To eliminate necessity to monitor for all possible negative keywords. I also do not get your idea of creating generic ad text to be able to see all relevant negatives - this is wrong logic as you should never have generic ad text - no use for search campaigns unless you dont mind paying a lot and not having conversions or clicks.