Other search terms - great source of negatives, improved CTR

Or it would be if I could see them

[pavlovapete]

Call me stupid or in a fantastic daze but I think that I could improve the quality of my advertising if I could see the "Other search terms" broken out.

I'm starting out with Broad and have thousands of them in there.

I could look through the list and find good negatives - stopping my irrelevant ads from being shown to uninterested users.

I could bid higher on queries that seem promising.

I could tell the boss that our CTR was 30%, not 0.3%.

I could satisfy my desire to ensconce myself in reams and reams of irrelevant data and pretend I was making real headway with my campaigns based on 'solid data'.

I could get over this feeling that I'm not being told the whole story or being allowed to see the full picture.

Cheers

[LucidSW]

> I'm starting out with Broad and have thousands of them in there.

There's your first problem right there. Use phrase and exact matches. That should significantly reduce your hits on broad matches and more manageable SQR data. Using phrase and exact also greatly reduces the need for negatives. I've heard of people having hundreds of negatives for a handful of broad-matched keywords.

[SanDiego Art]

Are you running a Search Query Report or just using the "See Search Terms..." button from within the AdGroup/Keyword screen?

I find that the Search Query Report does a much better job of showing you all the terms. The "See Search Terms..." button usually just shows the keywords that resulted in a click.

They used to group a large portion of keywords under 'other unique terms' in the Search Query Report, but I think they started showing a lot more of the terms recently.

[pavlovapete]

Thanks LucidSW, thanks SanDiego Art.

There's your first problem right there.

Well I'm not calling it a problem - it is a strategy :) Use Broad fist to identify the phrases and then the exacts. I'm not planning to always use Broad. There is a company around who specialise in filling your negative filter (10k negatives)

I find that the Search Query Report does a much better job of showing you all the terms.

OK I'll check this out.

Thanks for the tips.

Cheers

[LucidSW]

Good strategy but use phrase matches too. Remove the 2 and 3-word keywords, use phrase match instead. Reserve broad matches for longer tails and continue with your strategy. You won't have to find 10k negatives.