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The search terms scope in the Rule Engine is a great way to gather information to make a decision of, for example, adding negatives at the ad group level. When you are making the decision to add negatives, it's important to know if a particular search query - no matter what the query match type is - performed well or not. If it didn’t perform well at the ad group level, it's a good idea to add it as negative.
How does it Work
The Rule Engine - by default - will show you aggregated performance data for the same search terms with different match types or that match to different keywords in a given ad group. So for example, if a search term is matched with different query match types in a given ad group, in the results page you’ll see a single row of aggregated performance data for that search term, irrespective of the match type.
Similarly, if the same search term is matched to different keywords in an ad group, the Rule Engine will show you a single row of aggregated performance data for that search term.
Please note, however, that if you use a query or keyword level attributes in your rules, either in a condition or in an action, the system won't aggregate the performance data, and instead will start showing multiple rows for the same search term, depending on the match type or the matched keyword.
You can have those two segmentations, as it just depends on the conditions and actions you use.
Use Cases
Let's say that you want to see the clicks a search query got for each matching keyword and based on that make the decision of either adding it as a keyword or just getting a report with the data.
For example, with matching keywords as an attribute in the condition, the results page will show you multiple rows for the same search term. Each individual row is a combination of search terms and matching keywords, along with performance data such as clicks, conversions, etc.
Similarly, if you’re interested in seeing the performance data along with the search query match type, you can include all of them.
For this, the results page is going to show you more rows for the same search queries. You’ll see, for each individual row, the combination of the search term, search query match type, and the keyword it matches to. This is because both conditions were used.
The rule you see in the previous screenshots had no conditions on keyword or search query match type level, which allowed us to see the aggregated performance data.
If you want to segment the performance data, you can use the matching keyword, query match type of any of the keyword performance data, by selecting them as a metric in the rule. The tool will then segment the data accordingly.
Supported Actions
When creating strategies to manage search terms, you can set up the rules to take any of the following actions:
Select 'Include in Report' to generate a report of all search terms that matched the rule's conditions.
Select 'Add Keyword' to add the search term as a positive keyword at the Ad Group level or as a negative keyword at either the Ad Group or Campaign level. This will allow you to specify match types and other details such as copying tracking templates, URLs, etc
Select 'Create SKAG' to create a new Single Keyword Ad Group for each search term. You'll be able to specify the Ad Groups' naming conventions, match types, copy ads, etc.
Select 'Add to Negative Keyword List' to add the search terms as negative keywords to a shared negative list. On the action's configuration, you'll be able to specify the match type in which the keywords should be added, and you can add the keywords to an existing list by entering the list's name, or you can choose to create a new list by entering a new name. You can also decide whether you'd like to link the campaigns to which the search terms matched to the negative list or if you'd prefer to just add the negative keywords without linking the campaigns to the list.
