The state of Adwords Advertiser Accounts have changed over the years where it was once very common to find an account without negative keywords and now it is rather uncommon. In time, advertisers have either become savvier to Adwords best practices or they have hired agencies to implement strategies.

But how far have they really evolved?

I can tell you for certain that the Google’s profit algorithm has evolved even further and is always 10 steps ahead of its advertisers. So my job is to make sure you guys are keeping up with the times.Search queries happen to be a major part of the account research we do here at our ppc management company. Looking at what people actually type into Google tells us a lot about the visitors you are attracting and what they are looking for. Routine search query analysis is a paramount component for many advertisers but we feel most have just gone part of the way to maximize its usefulness.

3 Things to Analyze with Search Queries

Irrelevant Queries-This is the area where we’ve actually seen progress from Adwords’ customers. They pull a [Search Term] report, look through it, and add negative keywords for any irrelevant searches. Easy enough.

Incorrect Adgroup-This is where we start to see major problems. Incorrect adgroups refer to when the search query is relevant to the business offering but not the specific adgroup it is in. When this happens, the visitor can sees the less targeted ad and; if clicked, is sent to the wrong landing pages.

Example: query=dark bold coffee when adgroup=light body coffee; you might sell them both but you want the dark bold queries to go to the dark bold page, not the light body page.

This error is commonly overlooked because when Adwords managers review the query list, they are looking for discrepancies in the query defined but not which adgroup it belonged to. Problems with incorrect adgroups lead to lower CTRs, lower quality scores, higher CPCs, higher bounce rates, higher conversion costs, etc. A process which guides traffic down the appropriate avenues will have a positive impact on the account.

General Queries-This is the easier fix but often a more dangerous culprit. General terms tend to have more volume, competition, and cost associated with the clicks. So when general terms are plagueing the account, they are often putting a big dent in the wallet.

General terms can describe your business offering in either an overly vague sense or a more general category sense. When queries are general, it helps to evaluate how general it is and if it should be considered a candidate for your keyword list.

Example: query=coffee beans when adgroup= light body coffee; you certainly sell coffee beans but maybe they want to see the entire coffee selection of light and dark body types.

When general queries go to specific landing pages, the visitor often mistakes that page for the entire product offering. They are more likely to bounce and have the same negative effects as incorrect adgroup discrepancies. They are actually one in the same.

Sometimes you find that a general query doesn’t refine the visitor to be qualified enough to be a good paying customer for you. In this case you don’t want your ads to show for general queries. For example, “coffee” by itself might be too general for your taste (pun intended) but you would like ads to show for “gourmet coffee” and “dark roast coffee.”  Negative exact matched keywords are in order for these. i.e. [coffee]

Some questions that come in are:

• What match setting is the best?
• What percentage of our match settings should be broad?
• What match setting has the cheapest CPC?
• Which match settings make the optimal blend?

All of these questions infer that we are really missing our mark when explaining the subject. What we are saying is there is no definitive best or worst, appropriate percentage, or optimal blend that works for every advertiser. There is only the optimal blend for each individual account. The only way to really understand what blend is optimal for you is to look deep into your account’s search queries. When we are looking at search query analysis [See Search Terms button on the Keyword Tab] we are trying to observe who is clicking on the ads and where they going after. Search query analysis can be very overwhelming when you are looking at thousands of terms. In fact, this is why most advertisers end up rolling out match settings of mostly one type or another. It’s a quick fix for qualifying visitors when you don’t want to go through a long list.

There are dangers that coincide with all the match settings. Broad match means your ads can come up for almost any query. This is good because you receive the most amounts of possible impressions but you could possibly attract irrelevant visitors or ones which are better suited for a different ad group. Phrase match leaves a little variance still but cuts back the number of impression you’ll have. And exact match lets you control the query 100% but you only receive a fraction of the total impression share available to you.

So it really boils down to: Qualified Visits vs. Traffic Volume.

In order to find “your optimal blend”, it will take some time on your part to find what settings give you the most “qualified traffic volume.”

Some things you should keep in mind when analyzing search queries:

1. See how many negative keywords you can implement before changing the match setting. If this lowers your CPA toward your target, you might not need to add phrase match.
2. If the queries are too difficult to control and you routinely see a major onset of irrelevant inquiries, test a phrase match settings alongside your broad match version.
3. Pay notice to your conversion cost. If it is closer to your target, you might also find that the broad match version’s conversion cost has increased. Go back and review the broad match query report. Look for high volume relevant terms with low conversion cost. Add those in phrase match form to the adgroup’s keyword list until your phrase match volume is as high as possible. Pause the broad match setting keyword.
4. If your keyword is already exact match, and you have an extremely positive ROI for that keyword, consider loosening the match setting to drive more impressions. Beware your conversion cost might increase. If so, try and offset with negative keywords. It is okay to increase conversion costs as long as your net sales profit is higher overall.

An alternative to using standard match settings are to use Broad Match Modifiers. BMMs are somewhat a hybrid match type. They allow you to pick and choose what parts of the keyword have to be present in the search. Beyond that, the keyword is still open for broad match impressions and queries. BMMs are created by adding a plus “+” directly in front of each keyword in the term. i.e. “+Adidas +shoes” means that the query had to include Adidas and shoes but can also include other words. There is no order structure in which keyword have to be. So a “shoes Adidas” query would prompt that ad. The caveat to using BMMs is that you have to include every possible keyword version including both plural forms.

We’ll post soon to talk more on BMMs but for now, this is a good way to consider a strategy for match settings. In the end, you don’t want to manage match settings because one version has the cheapest CPC or because it’s easier to just make everything phrase match. You’ll want to do what is optimal because it returns you the highest amount of qualified, low cost per conversion visits and net sales profit.

When you, as an advertiser, can discover not only which queries people actually make but also what keywords and ads they trigger, you can take back control over your account and learn how easily people convert under the proper settings.

Negative keywords have other purposes than to simply weed out irrelevant inquiries. Here are 3 simple ways you can increase conversions by using negative keywords.

First, let’s take another look at where to find the correct negative keywords for your ad campaign. Remember- How we find negative keywords will indicate how best to use them. Google does a great job of hiding search query reports by running them in-line with keyword reporting in the Adwords UI. The reports are no longer under the Reports tab.

Finding Negative Keywords

The way to find negative keywords is to drill down the list of keywords into the campaign or adgroup you want to see queries for. If for example you sell musical instruments, and you want to see the queries for “Gibson guitars” you would navigate to the Gibson Guitars adgroup or campaign and view the Keywords tab.

Once you have this list of keywords in this adgroup or campaign, you have the choice to view queries for either a selected keyword(s) or all keywords. If you are curious to see which queries originated from a specific keyword simply select the box next to that keyword. You can select as many as you want. To see all the queries for that adgroup or campaign simply don’t select any keyword boxes.

Above the keywords, there is a drop-down box that labeled See Search Terms. Depending on whether you selected particular keywords, you will either click on All or Selected. If you didn’t select any keywords to begin with, you won’t have the Selected option available; you’ll have to click All.

Now you have your list of search queries. From here either view the information on page or download it to CSV file.

Using Negative Keywords: Limit Irrelevant Inquiry

If I were to ask a random group of any ten advertisers what they would use negative keywords for all of them would say, “in order to limit irrelevant queries” or something to that effect. So as advertisers have always used negatives, you would just pick the terms in the query that make it irrelevant or unqualified and add those specific terms to the negative keyword list.

If you are still viewing a list of queries in Adwords, you’ll have to go Back to Keywords and click Add Negatives at the bottom of the actual keyword list. Feel free to add as many as you need to the adgroup or campaign of choice.

Direct Traffic to The Intended Destination
Now this is a powerful thing to do when you learn that you are sending qualified traffic to wrong adgroups. Going back to our previous Gibson example; you see that there are “Gibson guitar pickups” queries showing up in the Gibson Guitars adgroup. People looking for this specific Gibson part are actually clicking on an ad that takes them to a landing page with just guitars- they came for a guitar part and saw only guitars. The most common reaction is to abandon ship without bothering to search for the part elsewhere on the site.

In this instance, you should add “pickups” to the Gibson Guitar specific adgroup negative keywords list. Now people searching for pickups on this site cannot see the ads that point them to the Guitars page.

Limit Overly General Inquiry

Continuing with the example, you see a query “music instruments” appear with several clicks in the negative keyword list. Bidding on the term “music instruments” is too costly despite the fact that you sell musical instruments. Perhaps a search for music instruments is too general and people that don’t have a specific instrument in mind might be less serious about a purchase.

In this case, not having qualified your visitors from those simply searching for “music instruments” leads to higher conversions costs. It is basically the same thing as bidding on the keyword itself.

There’s an easy fix. Simply add the exact match version of the term to the campaign. Adding [music instruments] exact match to your negative keywords will stop these visitors from costing you more and will directly result in lower conversion cost.

Sometimes, general queries require that negative keywords are actually used in conjunction with directing traffic to their targets. A good example is when a very general but relevant query surfaces in a product/service specific adgroup. The example would be if in your Gibson Guitar Pickups adgroup, you saw the term “Gibson guitar parts.” This is a relevant query, however, too general for this adgroup.

Once again, you should add exact match [Gibson guitar parts] to the negative keyword list of the Pickups adgroup. Merely adding “parts” as a negative keyword could result in your ads not properly displaying for the query “Gibson pickups and parts.” It is better to use the exact match negative keywords to eliminate the specific query.

Qualifying and directing visitors with negative keywords will result in lower conversions cost for 3 reasons:

1. You eliminate the cost of irrelevant or overly general queries. Now your click costs are used toward likely converting keywords.
2. For irrelevant queries, your ads no longer show which increases your CTR and could affect Quality Score, lowering your cost per click and subsequently your cost per conversion.
3. You direct more visitors to the most relevant landing page and increase your conversion rate by limiting abandonment and distraction. Given a fixed amount of clicks, your conversion cost is decreased.