If you've been running Google Ads for more than a few years, you'll remember a time when the Search Terms report showed you nearly everything. Every query that triggered your ads. Every variation. Every long-tail gem and every irrelevant waste of budget you could act on.
That changed significantly in September 2020, when Google updated its privacy policy to hide search terms that don't meet a minimum volume threshold. Since then, the way we use search term data has had to evolve — and in 2026, with Broad Match and AI-driven bidding now central to most campaign strategies, reading this report well is more important — and more nuanced — than ever.
The Search Terms report shows you the actual queries that triggered your ads — but only the ones Google determines meet a sufficient volume or significance threshold. Queries below this threshold are aggregated into a summary line or simply not shown at all.
This means you'll see the high-frequency terms, the obvious winners and losers, and the broad match expansions that Google has decided are relevant. What you won't see is the long tail of queries — many of which may be perfectly valid, or in some cases, a source of wasted spend.
The key shift: The Search Terms report is no longer a complete picture of where your budget is going. It's a representative sample. Your job is to draw conclusions from that sample intelligently.
Google has strongly encouraged the use of Broad Match keywords in combination with Smart Bidding over the past few years — and for many accounts, this combination genuinely works well. Broad Match with Target ROAS or Target CPA allows Google's auction-time bidding to consider far more contextual signals (device, time, user behaviour, intent signals) than any fixed keyword list could capture.
But Broad Match also means your search terms can vary enormously. A single keyword like "running shoes" might trigger queries as diverse as "best trail running shoes for flat feet" and "how long do running shoes last" — queries with very different conversion intent.
In the Search Terms report, you need to evaluate Broad Match terms differently. Rather than asking "is this query relevant to my keyword?" ask: "does this query represent the kind of buyer I want to reach, and is my bidding strategy likely to be profitable against it?"
With AI bidding doing more of the heavy lifting, your job in the search terms report is to identify intent patterns rather than policing individual keywords. Look for clusters of terms that signal purchase intent versus research intent, and check whether your bid strategy is equipped to handle both.
Terms with navigational intent (searching for a competitor's brand) or informational intent ("how to choose...") may show up — particularly with Broad Match. These may not be worth blocking outright, but understanding their volume and conversion rate is important.
Broad Match means you'll frequently see competitor brand names appearing in your search terms. This can be intentional (if you're targeting competitor audiences) or incidental. Either way, tracking how these terms perform — and whether they're converting — is valuable intelligence. If they're spending but not converting, add them as negatives.
Segment your search terms report by match type. Exact and phrase match terms will generally show tighter, more predictable performance. Broad match terms will show more variability. Understanding the conversion rate difference between match types in your account helps you decide how aggressively to expand or tighten your keyword strategy.
Even with less data, you can still find patterns of low-quality traffic. Look for queries containing words like "free," "how to," "DIY," or category terms far removed from your product. A structured negative keyword process — reviewed monthly at minimum — is still one of the highest-ROI activities in Google Ads management.
Download your search terms report as a CSV and use a spreadsheet to categorise terms by intent (commercial, informational, navigational). Even with incomplete data, this exercise will often reveal patterns worth acting on.
The SEO and PPC communities — including publications like Search Engine Land and communities like PPC Hero — have documented extensively how practitioners are adapting to reduced search term transparency. The consensus approaches include:
If you're running Performance Max campaigns, the situation becomes even more restricted. Performance Max doesn't offer a traditional Search Terms report — you get limited insight via the "Search Categories" and "Search Terms Insights" sections, which aggregate terms into themes rather than showing individual queries.
Search themes (a feature that allows you to provide Google with keyword-like signals for your Performance Max campaigns) give you a way to influence what kinds of queries your campaign targets. Treating search themes thoughtfully — and monitoring the search term insights Google provides — is currently the best available lever for managing query relevance in Performance Max.
Practitioners including Ed Leake and the team at Mightily have written extensively on how to structure Search Themes to maximise their effectiveness. The Paid Search Podcast has also covered this in detail if you want a deeper dive into the mechanics.
You're working with less data than you used to. That's simply true. But the data you do have is still deeply useful — and the advertisers who extract the most value from it are those who build a systematic, recurring process around their search terms review rather than treating it as an occasional audit.
In 2026, with AI playing a larger role in matching, bidding, and creative decisions, the Search Terms report has shifted from being a keyword management tool to being a signal interpretation tool. The question is no longer just "what should I block?" — it's "what does this traffic pattern tell me about who is finding me and why?"
Search Engine Land — Search term privacy and Google Ads updates · PPC Hero — Negative keyword and search term strategy · Paid Search Podcast — Performance Max and search term management
Common questions about this topic.
A Google Ads search term report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads — the exact words real users typed or spoke before clicking your ad. Unlike keywords (which you choose), search terms show real user behaviour. The report is essential for identifying irrelevant queries wasting budget, discovering new keywords worth targeting, and understanding how your keywords are actually matching to user intent.
For active campaigns, review your search term report weekly. This is the most direct source of negative keyword opportunities and new keyword ideas. For smaller budgets or lower-volume campaigns, a fortnightly review is sufficient. Accounts running broad match keywords or AI Max generate a much wider range of search terms and benefit from more frequent review.
Sort the search term report by impressions or cost and look for: terms completely unrelated to your product or service, brand names of competitors you don't want to appear for, informational queries with no purchase intent (e.g., 'how to fix' or 'reviews of'), and geographic terms that don't match your service area. Add these as negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level to stop wasting budget on irrelevant clicks.
If your triggered search terms differ significantly from your intended keywords, you likely have keywords set to broad match or phrase match that are expanding too aggressively. This is common in accounts that haven't reviewed their match types recently. Consider tightening match types for high-spend keywords, adding negatives for irrelevant query patterns, or using phrase and exact match to regain control over what triggers your ads.
Yes — the search term report is one of the best sources of new keyword ideas. Look for high-converting search terms that aren't in your keyword list (or exist only as broad match variants) and add them as exact or phrase match keywords with dedicated ad groups and landing pages. This gives you more control over bidding, more relevant ad copy, and better Quality Scores for those specific queries.
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