Search Terms Audit
A written report on what people actually typed to find you.
Your keyword list is what you chose to target. The search terms report is what people actually typed. This audit reads that report and hands back a categorized breakdown, not a raw export.
- No contracts, ever
- $0 setup fee
- 30-day guarantee, pay only if satisfied
What we set up
A categorized read of every search term, not a raw list.
Every term sorted into a category
Each search term gets marked as a strong candidate for its own keyword, a clear candidate for a negative, or a borderline call worth a human decision, instead of one long undifferentiated export.
A brand versus non-brand breakdown
We separate how much of your spend and clicks come from people already searching your business name from spend on generic searches, since the two behave very differently and often get judged by the same yardstick by mistake. A campaign judged purely on its blended cost per lead can look excellent simply because brand traffic is mixed in, even if the non-brand side is actually struggling on its own.
A close variant check
Even exact match keywords now match close variants, plurals, minor misspellings, and some reworded versions of the same search. We flag where that widening is pulling in traffic you did not expect from an exact match term.
A written summary, not just a spreadsheet
The findings come back as a short written report explaining what we found and why it matters, alongside the underlying data, so it is something you can actually read and act on. Technical terms get saved for a short glossary at the end rather than scattered through the main write-up.
How this job is scoped
Access we need
Read access to the Google Ads account, or an export of the search terms report covering a wide enough date range to reflect real patterns rather than one unusual week.
What gets delivered
A written report with search terms sorted into keyword candidates, negative candidates, and borderline calls, plus the brand versus non-brand split for the period reviewed. The report states the exact date range it covers, so a future audit can be measured against this one on equal footing.
The acceptance test
You can point to any search term in the underlying data and find it categorized in the report with a stated reason, not left out or grouped into a vague catch-all. Borderline calls are labeled as borderline rather than quietly rounded into either the keyword or negative pile, so nothing gets decided for you without saying so.
What is out of scope
This job is the read and the report. Actually adding the negatives or new keywords the report recommends is a separate implementation job: negative keyword cleanup, or a broader account restructure.
How the audit runs
01
Pull the data
We pull the search terms report over an agreed window, wide enough to smooth out normal week to week noise in what people are typing.
02
Categorize and write it up
Every term gets sorted and the reasoning gets written into plain language, not left as a spreadsheet column only we understand.
03
Walk through it together
We go through the report with you, flag the borderline calls that need your judgment, and agree on what happens next with the findings.
Search terms audit FAQ
Yes, the raw report is there for anyone with account access. What this job adds is someone reading every line, categorizing it, and explaining what it means, which is different from having the data available and having the time to make sense of it.
This is the read and the report: what we found and what we recommend. Negative keyword cleanup is the implementation step, actually adding the negatives at the right level once you have decided to act on the findings.
Usually a window wide enough to include a few weeks of normal activity, so a single unusual day does not distort the picture. The exact window depends on how much traffic your account gets.
Someone searching your business name by name is already looking for you specifically. Judging that traffic by the same standard as a generic first-time search usually leads to the wrong conclusion about what is actually working.
The price scales with account size and how much history is worth reading through carefully. Once we can see access or an export, we start sorting the terms right away. Most scoped plans go out within one business day, free for you to review.
See what people actually typed before you spent on it.
Send account access, or export the search terms report yourself and share the file. Either approach gives us enough to work through the data properly. The audit plan usually turns around inside one business day, at zero cost to you.