How to Use Microsoft Ads to Gain Search Term Insights
In September of this year, Google Ads removed search terms for 28% of paid search budgets. Google stated that the search terms report “only includes terms that a significant number of users searched for, even if a term received a click.”
Advertisers now have significantly reduced visibility into which search queries trigger their ads, even if they drive a click or conversion. On Microsoft Ads, we were seeing almost 99% of the budget was still reported in the search term report.
Search terms are crucial to understanding your audience. They help to uncover irrelevant queries to negate, identify expansion opportunities or potential content gaps in copy and landing pages.
Microsoft Ads Has Always Provided More Visibility into the Queries Users Search For
Google Ads is often seen as the head honcho in terms of showing your ads to the most (and best) users, however, that’s not necessarily the case.
We’re here to uncover the invaluable insights Microsoft Ads continues to provide even after Google’s September update.
A few reasons you shouldn’t sleep on Microsoft include...
📈 5x the Opportunity Data: Expansion & Efficiency
💸 1/7th the Cost
❄️ 87% of queries unique to Microsoft Advertising (Bing)
🖱️ INCLUDING ZERO-CLICK QUERIES (ohhh, the possibilities!)
Microsoft Ads has always provided more visibility for advertisers into the queries users search for, even those that never received a click.
Google, on the other hand, has yet to release this data. Within our analysis, zero-click queries made up 93% of the total queries reported and 45% of total impressions.
You can look at this two ways:
- Are users not clicking your ads because the copy doesn’t speak to them?
- Or are the queries triggering your ads completely irrelevant?
If the latter: Our CTR would have almost doubled by simply negating every query that never received a click. DOUBLED!
If the former: We could gain 30,000 clicks and 1,300 conversions even if 2% of those impressions received a click by improving our ad copy. That would be 23% growth for this account!
Analyze Your Ngrams
Start looking at those n-grams within queries immediately to uncover themes quickly within the long-tail, and determine your course of action: build better copy and content, or negate.
Another great thing about this is we use n-grams to fuel our tools like Saving Benjamin™. By including this additional data set, we will be able to find irrelevant traffic even quicker -- literally before you even spend money!
Testing Campaigns on Microsoft Ads Before Google?
As mentioned earlier, Google Ads is often seen as an immediate place to go when launching campaigns.
But if we’re getting 5x the amount of data at 1/7th of the cost, does it make sense to test new campaigns on Microsoft Ads first?
YES! You can use the data to quickly make changes to your campaigns before ever spending a dime of your budget on Google. In turn, this will help you make more informed decisions about keyword targeting.
We want to hear what’s happening with your Microsoft campaigns! Let us know what you’re seeing below or on Twitter (@SeerInteractive).
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