Hello Kalena!

I have a question regarding Google Adwords.

In one specific ad group I have a keyword that receives a lot of impressions and a low amount of clicks. It is a general keyword but one we don’t want to miss out on. I have it set for phrase match (the keyword is ‘wire cutters’). I want to be able to manage it by using negative keywords.

I do have a lot of negatives set up already, but I suspect there are more I could be using because ‘wire cutters’ can be used in so many applications. We have a website for a very specific niche market.

My question then is this: is there a way to see what keywords/phrases were searched on triggering an impression for my ad but not a click?

Hi Jackie,

As you are no doubt aware (but for the sake of our other readers) “phrase matched” keywords will allow your Ads to be potentially displayed for any searches which include the specific keyword phrase. Negative keywords allow you to block your Ads from showing if specific keywords are include in the search.

So for example if you have “wire cutters” as a keyword phrase, with the negative keywords “-cheap” and “-UK”, then your Ads could be displayed for searches of “jewellery wire cutters”,  “wire cutters USA”, “Australian Wire Cutters Jewellery”, but NOT for searches such as “cheap wire cutters” or “wire cutters UK”.

Negative Keywords

Using negative keywords can be a very effective way to prevent your Ads from being displayed (impressions) for searches that are unlikely to lead to sales, and at the same time improve your click through rate (and probably quality score).  However, as you have pointed out, there could be a huge list of negative keywords that may be relevant, and identifying them all can be difficult.    Unfortunately I am not aware of a simple way that you could identify keywords that give you impressions, but don’t result in clicks.  It seems like a reasonable requirement, and perhaps one of the existing Adwords reports may be able to provide this, but off the top of my head I’m not aware of any that provide what you need.  If any readers have a suggestion, please add a comment below.

Extend Target Keywords

Rather than increasing the negative keywords, you may like to consider extending your target keyword phrases by including niche specific keywords rather than general ones (this could be the best option if your niche is very specific as you have suggested).  You may also like to change the wording of your Ads to make them much more relevant to your niche. This is likely to improve your conversion rate per click, but won’t reduce your impressions, and will probably also reduce your click through rate (and possibly quality score).

Andy Henderson
Ireckon Web Marketing

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