How to find paid search keywords that customers really use

How do you know if your paid search keywords are really used by customers? Do you know there is a big chance that you are wasting money on Google Adwords for useless keywords and you don’t even know? You might say this to against me, “We have well-organised Ad groups with two-words and three words phrase-match keywords that have high quality scores. We also put some negative keywords that prevents irrelevant clicks, the Return-on-Investment(ROI) is positive, therefore we are satisfied.” Well, you did a good job, but you could do a BETTER job if you know exactly what your targeting audiences are searching.

customer's exact google search query

Most of the Google Adwords advertisers have two things in common:

1. Start a new campaign with Brainstorming some keywords and then use Google Adwords Keyword Tool to expand the keywords list, it will more or less contain some guesses even if they are experienced. (I will explain why experience is not always working later)

2. Don’t know how to track exact paid keywords that customers use.

In order to better target right audiences and understand their search behaviors, you have to know what search queries your customers type in search engines.  So let us resolve these two problems one by one.

Problem 1: Brainstorming keywords with group members is a good idea, but remember, you and your colleagues are not your customers. You cannot get keywords purely based on your guess and experience. So how to get those keywords?  Shouldn’t I just type in some generic keywords and let Google Adwords tell me what keywords are being searched using exact-match? I would say NO, you will probably lose some customer-using keywords at the very first step, even if you get a list of keywords in Adwords Keywords Tool. So what tool to use at very first step of keyword research? Google Insight.

Let’s take “christmas shopping” as an example, now brainstorm 5 keywords in one minute.

What’s your keywords list? Mine is “christmas shop”, “christmas shops”, “christmas shopping”, “christmas sales” and “shopping in christmas”. I put these 5 keywords in Google Adwords to see the results, hmm, not bad, there are 13 exact-match keywords which have local search volume more than 100 in October, if change the match type to be phrase-match, there will be 20 of them.

You think that’s what customers search when Christmas is coming? Nahhh, try Google Insight first, it will tell you the top searches for “christmas shopping”.

It not only displays the keywords phrases that customers really search, but also tells you the regional interest and raising searches. And I input these 10 keywords into Google Adwords, result shows 40 exact-match keywords that have search volumes higher than 100. It is very important to get on the right track at first step, otherwise you could miss many search keywords that customers really use.

*Remember that I said experience is not always working? Campare the data between 2007 and 2009.

Time had changed, so did popular keywords. The keywords that being used in 2007 are quite different from 2009.

Problem 2: Now you have your exact-match and phrase-match keywords set up, but how could you know what keywords that your customers type in if phrase-match keywords are triggered, they can be anything. For example, you have phrase-match keyword “christmas shopping”, if a customer searches “where is the best place for christmas shopping” , your ad will be displayed, but you wouldn’t know his search query above.

According to statowl’s keywords search report(Jan 09 – Oct 09), 30.99% of the search queries were 3 words, 25.41% of the search queries were 4 words, and 16.01% were 5 words. ONLY 12.21% and 5.57% of the search queries were 2 words and 1 word respectively.

That is to say, if you have a lot two-word and three-word phrase-match keywords, under most circumstances you wouldn’t be able to know what people searched to trigger your ad. What will be the consequences?

- Consume large amount of your precious time on finding negative keywords

- Not be able to understand customer search behaviors accurately

- Not be able to reduce costs by cutting unnecessary keywords

- Don’t even know you are wasting money

So how exactly can we track paid search keywords since default Google Analytics can only track non-paid exact search queries. Answer is to set up an advanced custom filter in Google Analytics.

There are two filters you have to set up for your campaign: (How to create filters)

The first filter

Filter name > name doesn’t matter

Filter type > custom filter

Field A –> Extract A > Referral > (\?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*)   Note: this will track the exact keywords

Field B –> Extract B > Campaign Medium > cpc|ppc  Note: this means only track paid search queries

Output To –> Constructor > Custom Field 1 > $A3   Note: tells Google Analytics where to store the data.

Field A Required > Yes

Field B Required > Yes

Override Output Field > Yes

Case Sensitive > No

The second filter

Filter name > name doesn’t matter

Filter type > custom filter

Field A –> Extract A > Custome Field 1 > (.*)    Note: display exact keywords that customers search

Field B –> Extract B > Campaign Term >(.*)   Note:  display your campaign keywords

Output To –> Constructor > Campaign Term > “$B1, $A1”  Note: format the display of keywords

Field A Required > Yes

Field B Required > Yes

Override Output Field > Yes

Case Sensitive > No

Important Note: These two filter have to be in the correct order, first one and then second one.

More info about Regular Expression is here, and thanks to the author of Google Analytics Expert for the great method.

Here is the test analytics report below. As you can see, it displays exactly what I searched after the campaign keywords. As long as you know these accurate paid search queries, you will be able to optimise your campaign easily.

So what are you still waiting for? It’s time to determine what exactly the paid search keywords that your customers really use, and hence optimise your campaign and improve the performance.

I am pretty sure that you have your own opinion on this topic, why don’t share it here? I would love to hear it. Also, If you have different tracking methods or even better ones, please do not hold your voice, I am eager to know them. Thank you.

Since you are reading this entry about Google Analytics, do you know there are 5 things you can mess up Google Analytics data?

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