Separate customer queries from campaign targets
A target is what you ask the campaign to match; a search term is what the shopper actually entered or viewed. The search-term view reveals the language and product relationships that produced clicks and sales, including matches you did not plan directly.
Sort terms into four action groups
- Profitable converters: consider moving them into controlled manual targeting.
- Promising terms: retain and gather more evidence before making a large bid change.
- Expensive non-converters: review relevance, click volume, and negative-target options.
- Unexpected themes: use them to improve listing language or reveal a mismatch in positioning.
Use enough data for the decision size
One click rarely justifies a hard negative, and one sale rarely proves a scalable keyword. Use thresholds that reflect your conversion rate, average order value, and break-even ad spend. Larger changes require stronger evidence.
Change one layer at a time
Record whether you changed the bid, match type, negative targeting, budget, or listing. When several variables move together, it becomes difficult to learn why performance changed. A weekly routine creates cleaner tests and a more reusable account history.