Probably a dumb question - what is the difference between a keyword and a search term?

Question

Probably a dumb question but I have been running my own ads for four months and I am not
confident I have this right.

I thought keywords were what people type. Then I found a report full of things nobody put in
the account, some of them nothing like my keywords, and now I am not sure what I have been
looking at all this time.

Can someone explain it plainly? I would rather ask and look daft than keep guessing.

Priya Deshmukh · Accepted Answer

Not a dumb question, and getting it the wrong way round is extremely common.

A keyword is what you told Google you want to show up for. A search term is what somebody
actually typed. Google decides which of your keywords is close enough to a given search
term to enter the auction, and how loose "close enough" is depends on the match type you
chose.

So the report you found is the truth about where your money went. Your keyword list is
only the request.

The practical consequence, which is the whole reason people care: the gap between those
two lists is where waste lives. You bid on "office chairs" and get charged for "office
chair repair near me", which you don't do. You cannot see that from the keyword list -
only from the search terms.

Reading that report and adding negatives for the things you never want is, honestly, most
of the job.

Lin Chen · Answer

I asked almost exactly this in my first month and nobody minded. Worth adding one thing
that confused me for a while: you will not see every search term. Google hides the rare
ones, so the report is most of your spend rather than all of it.

Ken Oyelaran · Answer

That explains an enormous amount. Been optimising the wrong list since September.

Probably a dumb question - what is the difference between a keyword and a search term?

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