← Glossary
What is a search term?
A search term is what a person actually typed, as opposed to the keyword you bid on that matched it.
The two are routinely different, and the gap is where wasted spend lives. Your keyword might be 'emergency plumber' while the search term that triggered it was 'plumber salary' — you paid for both identically.
The search terms report is the single most useful screen in Google Ads. It shows exactly what you bought rather than what you intended to buy.
Read it in two directions: terms that convert should be promoted to their own exact-match keywords so you can bid on them deliberately, and terms that waste money should become negative keywords. Doing this regularly is most of what ongoing Google Ads management actually is.