Search Terms N-Grams - User Guide
Geetanjali Tyagi avatar
Written by Geetanjali Tyagi
Updated over a week ago

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What does it do? 

The Search Terms N-Grams breaks down search queries into individual words or phrases and shows the top 100 search terms based on the selected metric (impressions, clicks, conversions, etc). You can also click on words and phrases to add them to shared negative lists.

Why should you use it?

With the Search Terms N-Grams, you can:

  1. Gauge which search queries are driving traffic to your account. It removes the requirement to go through the entire Search Terms Report. This way, you can also make sure you don't miss out on long-tail search terms.

  2. Get new keyword ideas. For example, it is 2018 and you're a travel company and you see 2019 in the word cloud. This information will tell you that people have already started planning travel for next year and you should create ad groups to capture that traffic.

  3. Find negative keywords that are driving traffic to your site and which are not converting. Add them as negatives to stop getting irrelevant traffic. 

How does it work? 

The Search Terms N-Grams breaks down each search term into individual words and aggregates data from each of these individual words within the search terms report. 

For example, for "Cheap Amsterdam Hotels":

  1. If you sort by 1-Gram, the results shown will be based on the performance of the individual word “hotels”.

  2. If you sort by 2-Grams, the results shown will be based on the performance of “Amsterdam hotels”.

  3. If you sort by 3-Grams, the results shown will be based on the performance of “cheap Amsterdam hotels”.

The system will then gather data for every occurrence of these individual words within the search terms report, meaning the ROAS for "hotels", for example, would include performance information from all its variations (Amsterdam hotels, cheap Amsterdam hotels, etc). 

Pick Search Terms By
Select the metric you would like to use to view data.

Color Code Search Terms By
You can see the search terms by different color codes based on certain metrics. For example, if you select clicks and find "shirts" in a dark color it signifies this search term gets you a high number of clicks. Similarly, any search term with a light color denotes it triggers fewer clicks.

N-Grams
You can also see the search terms based on the number of words. You can sort by up to 6 N-Grams and it will show the results based on the selection.

Search Queries filter

You can choose to include all queries or only queries without conversions.

Understanding the Results

After you select the parameters, you will see the top 100 words from the search terms report in a word cloud format. The size of the word will determine the position of the word in the top 100 list, and under the cloud, you'll see the terms listed with the values for each metric.

For example, if you filter by clicks, the word that has the biggest font size will have the highest number of clicks, and the list will order the information accordingly. 

Count

The table below the N-Grams cloud gives you a list of all the search terms present in the cloud along with the important metrics such as Count, Impressions, Clicks, Interactions, Cost, Conversion, etc.

The 'Count' column indicates the number of times a particular search term appears in search queries, whether it's as part of a term or in its entirety. Clicking on the value under the Count column for a search term opens a side tray that lists the exact search terms that appeared for those 'n' instances with their performance metrics. You can access this for your Google, Microsoft, or Yahoo Japan Ad accounts.

For instance, if you click on the 'Count' column value for the "Amsterdam Hotels" 2-Grams search term, you will see a list of search queries like "Cheap Amsterdam Hotels," "Affordable Amsterdam Hotels," and others, along with their associated performance metrics.

Download Information

Here you have the option to download the image, a CSV file for an account with up to 1000 rows, and a CSV file with campaign and ad group aggregation. 

Adding as Negative Keyword

Clicking on the words/phrases in the list or word cloud will bring up a window to add that term as a negative keyword. In the next step, you'll get the option to select the match type and choose whether to add them to a shared negative list or as an account-level negative. You can create new shared negative lists as well.

The search option will ease your way to find common words like 'Google' to review the search terms containing it and decide to add them as negative in bulk.

You can also bulk-select terms to be added as negative keywords, define their match type, and select/create a shared negative list or add them as an account-level negative.

Demo Video

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