Google Ads recently introduced one more novelty or, if you ask me and my colleagues in this line of work, aggravating feature. Prior to this change, Google Ads made it possible to track which search term results in a click on an ad.

In the Search Terms Report, each keyword resulting in a click on an ad could be checked. In addition to tracking each term resulting in a click on an ad, one could track each term resulting in conversion. In other words, if a particular campaign resulted in 7 conversions, one could use Search Terms Report to review which exactly search terms led to the 7 conversions.
This information is useful for advertisers because the Search Terms Report helps them decide which keywords to lease based on whether they convert, to what extent, and at what cost.
But why would such useful information be still available to the advertisers? Thus, the advertisers would be able to optimize their accounts and achieve better conversion rates for their clients at lower costs. Then Google couldn’t enforce their suggestions because the advertisers already know what’s best for their clients and probably won’t accept many of the suggestions offered by Google. This, of course, is just a guess.
Whether that’s the reason behind Google introducing this novelty that makes the advertisers’ job more difficult we are bound to find out sooner or later… or maybe never. However, the current state of the affairs is such that, in the Google Ads system, which is constantly growing and advancing, some information that was available until recently can no longer be accessed. At the moment, Google offers only partial information if you get 7 conversions in a particular ad group.
In the example provided, out of the total of 7 conversions, Google provides information related to 5 conversions (4.90 due to attribution, so let’s round it to 5), while 2 conversions are not available, i.e., we do not have the information which search term led to the remaining 2 conversions.
Even better, the instances where Google does not show most of the search terms that led to conversions are quite frequent. In other words, out of the total of 9 conversions, there are 5 that do not provide the information on which search terms led to those conversions.
Why does Google do this?
If you hover the mouse over a circled question mark in the section Total: Other search terms at the bottom of the Search Terms Report, i.e., search terms that Google refuses to show you, there will be the following message: Total of search terms not shown in this report that resulted in click but were not searched on by a significant number of people.
Interestingly, Google often does not display search items that resulted in conversion, but it often shows long-tail search terms that were probably googled by very few people.
To make matters even more interesting, Google hides 5 search terms with significantly lower conversion costs and a higher conversion rate and displays 4 search terms that are obviously more expensive and have a lower conversion rate. The average cost of converting an ad group is $105.67, and the average price of converting queries displayed is $148.52. Therefore, the average cost of converting for 5 search terms we can’t see is less than $105.67.
But let’s just briefly more dwell on the fact that Google is hiding data and try to solve this issue.
Solving the issue
The hidden data issue could still be solved with a little help from Google Analytics (at least until Google Analytics is improved as well)
In Google Analytics go to Acquisition, then choose Google Ads, and finally click on Campaigns (Fig. 4)
Choose the campaign in which you wish to analyze search terms.
You can also select a particular Ad Group to simplify the analysis.
When you reach the keyword level or the product in the Shopping campaign, in the section above the metrics table, click on a drop-down menu Secondary dimension, and choose Search Query.
Data volumes could be large, and the list of the search terms could be quite long, so I suggest sorting the search items by the Goal Completions column or by desired conversion.
And there we are. Now we have a list of all search terms that resulted in conversion. This is what Google Ads refuses to show as of recently. The desired information is available, but we need to do a little bit more mining and digging!
For more informations and research fromm Google Ads i Analytics world, look futher on my blog