Search terms reportSearch terms report

Keywords are what you bid on; search terms are what people typed. The search terms report, under Insights and reports in the Campaigns menu, lists the searches that triggered your ads, with the match type that reached each one, such as Exact match (close variant), and whether it's already been added as a keyword or excluded.

• Google leaves out searches without enough query activity, for privacy, so the report never lists every search.
• Ticking terms and choosing Add as negative keyword adds them as negative exact by default in a Search campaign, unless you change the match type.
• Performance Max has its own search terms report.

For a brand, your own report shows how your keywords reach searches for your name, its misspellings and the code searches. It's also the source of a common gap in a publisher's negatives: a search added from the report as negative exact blocks that search alone, and not your name with other words around it.

It can't show anyone else's searches. For those, Auction insights shows which domains were in your auctions, and a recorded check shows which ads appeared.