Duplicate search terms

To maintain ad serving control, it's best for a search term to show only from one ad group. Adalysis will alert you if search terms have shown from two or more ad groups. You'll see the alerts under Alerts > Search terms on your dashboard, with separate notifications for Search and Shopping campaigns.

By default, the alerts are based on a minimum of 50 impressions in the last 90 days. However, you can edit these thresholds in your Account settings.

Click on the alert to see sets of duplicate terms, as well as performance metrics and the cannibalization rate. This indicates how significantly the impressions for a search term are diluted across different ad groups. The higher the cannibalization rate, the more attention you should pay to the issue. 

Note: Duplicate search terms are reported at the campaign level only (not the account level).

Analyze duplicate search terms 

To resolve this issue, add search terms as negatives to the less relevant/efficient ad groups. As well as performance metrics, we recommend looking at these two columns when making your decision:

• Added as keyword? For Search campaigns, this column shows you if this keyword already exists in this ad group. Hover over 'Yes' to see the keyword match type. If the search term hasn't been added to any of the ad groups yet, select the most relevant group and click the plus icon.

• Matched keywords. For Search campaigns, this column gives you an overview of which keywords and ads were triggered for the search term, as well as performance and quality score data. This will help you identify whether the search term should be added as a negative keyword to any of the ad groups it was triggering. Click the icon in the Add as negative keyword column to add search terms to your negative keyword list. 

Clicking the icon opens a preview section. By default, the chosen search terms will be added as exact-match negative keywords at the ad group level. However, you can change the match type and the level as needed. Once your negative keyword list is ready, click Add negative keywords.

Adalysis will alert you to potential conflicts, such as a negative keyword in an ad group with the same keyword in the same match type. Click the ad group name to open a new tab where you can remove the conflicting keywords. 

Work with multiple sets of duplicate search terms 

You can also add duplicate search terms as negative keywords in bulk. Select the sets you want to work with and click Add as a negative keyword the duplicate search term. Select the criteria for when a search term should be added as negative. For example, you may want to add search terms as negative keywords to ad groups with the lowest CTR or fewest conversions.

For Search campaigns, you also can choose to add all search terms as negatives, if they're not already defined as keywords in the ad groups they are triggering. This allows you to make sure that a specific search term only shows for the ad group where you originally added it as a keyword. 

In this case, suggestions for negative keywords will only be produced if the search term exists as a keyword in any ad group. If a search term doesn't exist as a keyword in your campaign, consider adding it.