Add Performing Search Terms

Turn search terms that already convert into keywords in the ad group that served them.

Your search terms report is a list of what people actually typed. Some of those searches already convert, but are not keywords yet, so you have less control over them than you could have. This automation finds them and adds them as keywords in the ad group that served them.

How it decides

Each run reads the search terms report over your chosen lookback period, then keeps only the terms that clear every threshold you have enabled:

• Minimum impressions, clicks, conversions and cost are volume gates. They stop the automation acting on a term that happened to convert once.
• Minimum CTR is a relevance gate.
• Maximum CPA is the cost ceiling. A term that converts but costs too much is not added.

Any threshold set to 0 is not applied. Because a term has to clear all the enabled ones, adding more thresholds makes the automation stricter, not looser.

Requiring at least one conversion plus a sensible impression count is the usual starting point. It keeps the automation to terms with evidence behind them.

What it skips

Three kinds of term are left alone, so the automation cannot make your account messier:

• Terms that are already keywords anywhere in the account.
• Terms identical to the keyword that matched them. There is nothing to add.
• Duplicates across ad groups. The same search can be served by several ad groups. Adding it to each would create keywords competing with each other for the same search, so the first ad group seen keeps it.

Match types

Match types decides how each new keyword is created. Listing more than one creates the term in each, so a term added as exact and phrase becomes two keywords.

Exact and phrase together is the usual choice: exact gives you control of the precise search, phrase catches close variants of it. Broad is rarely what you want here, since the point of the automation is to act on searches you have already seen convert.

Settings

Filters restricts the automation to campaigns carrying a campaign label. Leave it empty to include every campaign.

Date range sets how much search term history each run reads. A longer window finds more terms and takes longer to react to a change in demand.

Thresholds holds the six performance gates.

Execution holds the match types and Apply automatically.

Suggested approach

Run it by hand and read the proposals before letting it write anything. Keywords are easy to add and tedious to unpick, and the proposal list tells you immediately whether your thresholds are too loose.

If a run proposes far more keywords than you expected, raise the volume thresholds rather than shortening the date range. A shorter window makes the automation act on less evidence, which is the opposite of what you want.

Proposals are grouped by ad group and match type. Large groups are split into batches, because Google Ads limits how many keywords one change can carry. Seeing one ad group appear as several changes is normal.