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The Google Analytics search terms report helps advertisers identify new search terms that have high potential so that they can add them to their keyword list for pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
When people use a search engine like Google to look for information, products, or services, they can enter a search query and find thousands of relevant results in a split-second. The most relevant results are shown at the top of the search engine results pages (SERPs).
For anyone in ecommerce, there is a lot to be gained by learning how your customers search, what terms they use, and which search terms have the greatest value.
In this article, we’ll discuss the Google Analytics search terms report, and explain how it can help you create more profitable PPC campaigns.
In Google Shopping campaigns, you can use search query targeting to align your ad content with the intent of specific search queries. Big players in any market can stand out by their name alone, and it’s easy for them to muscle their way to the top of SERPs with their budget and reputation.
Luckily for smaller businesses, Google Shopping has evolved. Now, you can’t just throw money at advertising to make it work. Instead, you must focus on search terms, and deliver quality content and ads that are relevant to specific terms — and to your target audience.
Keywords are the foundational blocks of a search network campaign. However, there is no direct and easy way of keyword targeting for Google Shopping.
Instead, Google Shopping relies on your data feed to target searches for your products. Advertisers send their data feed to the Google Merchant Center, and then Google determines how specific user search queries will trigger your ads.
The Google Ads’ algorithm can find correlations between product-related and commercial queries and aims to serve the most relevant results in SERPs for every query. As such, at least one result will likely be in line with the user’s intent.
At the top of the marketing funnel, it’s normal to target some broader search terms, like budget android phones. General phrases like this don’t have a lot of purchasing intent, as people are at the beginning of the shopping process and may only be learning about a new topic or product.
It’s possible to convert on general search queries like this, but you have less control over the products that display when you create ads with such broad terms. If you use the keyword, budget android phones, you may have 20 products that show for this search.
Ideally, you should use more specific terms for advertising each product, so you can hone in on users that are more likely to buy. Unlike search campaigns, Google Shopping does not offer advertisers the option of using exact match targeting, which is when your ad is only triggered for search terms that exactly match your keyword.
However, you can utilize other methods, such as keyword sculpting, negative keywords, and priority settings, which will help ensure the right ads (and products) display for the right user search queries.
A Google Shopping whitelist is a means of automating your keyword selection process. Doing this will help you refine your keywords list, so that it includes more relevant, profitable terms.
Here is how a Google Shopping whitelist works:
With the help of the Google Analytics search terms report and data analytics technology, you can identify your top-performing keywords — the ones that contribute the most to your conversions and revenue. These terms are more valuable because there is a strong correlation between the keywords, user intent, and your products. You can create a Shopping whitelist that includes these approved search terms.
Next, look for search terms that trigger your ad, but ultimately, are irrelevant to your offer. For example, if you sell cardboard box packaging, you don’t want to pay for clicks every time somebody searches for “boxing.” Create a negative keywords list to filter out irrelevant clicks, as this conserves your budget and ensures you attract more relevant traffic.
Product Listing Ads (PLAs) enable ecommerce owners to advertise their product images, descriptions, and prices in Google Ads.
With a consistent approach to gather query data and adding non-converting search terms as negative keywords, you’ll soon have a campaign where your ads are only triggered for your top-performing keywords.
Furthermore, you can get aggressive with your keyword bids to ensure you rank higher on more of your target keywords. In theory, you could turn all of your Google Shopping campaigns into search query-targeted campaigns.
The Google Analytics search terms report shows you the overall view of all search terms that triggered your PPC ad. However, you can’t view the specific products that were shown in a particular search query.
For instance, a men’s clothes outlet may have a lot of products in its Google Merchant Center (GMC) feed file. Those products exist in the Shopping campaigns, and they continually trigger ad clicks.
When the PPC manager goes into the Google Analytics search terms report for the Shopping campaign, they will be able to see that blue jeans and men shirts triggered ads. However, they won’t be able to see which specific product from the store was displayed for the keywords.
What’s the solution to this problem?
To address this issue, here’s what to do:
In Google Merchant Center (GMC), you must add a UTM parameter (utm_term) to all of your products.
1. First, you need to go to your GMC and create a rule for the ‘link’ attribute. For this you can first go to “Products” sections, then go to “Feed” then select your feed. After that click on plus sign and find the “link” attribute to add.
once you clicked on “linked” then you will find next screen where you can add utm_term param.
2. By adding ‘? utm_term=’ following by ‘id’ attribute.
3. Next, you have to ‘Save’ and ‘Apply’ the rule.
4. Then you have to ‘Fetch’ your feed file again.
5. In Google Analytics, navigate to Admin > Property > Property Settings. Then change Advanced Settings by checking the box, Allow manual tagging (UTM values) to override auto-tagging (GCLID values) for Google Ads.
6. Then you must wait. The waiting time depends on when Google will populate the GMC feed file in your Google Ads account. You can check if it’s ready by checking the ‘Products’ section in the Google Ads interface. Look at your Final URLs to see if this code string affixed to the end:
? utm_term=XYZ (where XYZ is the product ID)
If so, you’re all set!
7. Next, go to Google Analytics and navigate to Reports > Acquisition > Google Ads > Search Queries.
8. Set the ‘Secondary dimension’ to ‘Keyword.’
9. Depending on your IDs, if you have only numbers in them, you can create a filter like this: 0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7|8|9|0
This method of hacking the Google Analytics search terms report takes a little work to implement, and it also poses a new problem:
In the report, you will now see 0 clicks for those search terms!
If you have a filter at the campaign level (with any attribute), you will see in the report keywords with strange code strings — ‘product_type_l1==…. &+custom0==… &+custom3==…’ — that may confuse you.
Don’t worry, as you can filter these “keywords” with a regular expression. A regular expression, also known as regex, is a string of characters used to create a search pattern.
Here are some benefits of the Google Analytics search terms report for Google Shopping campaigns:
When you have same products but in different campaigns for same country, you can use the priority setting. This setting is useful after analyzing your search queries as well. The priority setting tells which campaign should be used first for a query.
The Google Analytics search terms report has some shortcomings, in that you can’t see which products are shown whenever your ad is triggered. However, with the steps in this article, you can work around that issue. Ultimately, this report helps you improve your keyword targeting in Google Shopping campaigns, which is a big step towards more profitable campaigns that deliver on your customer’s expectations.
Find out more about Shopping campaigns in our blog, Google Shopping Campaign Optimization: The PPC Manager’s Guide.
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