Tutorial: N-gram analysis
Spot patterns, cut waste, and uncover new opportunities from your search terms at scale
N-grams make it much easier to analyze large numbers of search terms and get insights into your data. By breaking search terms into patterns of 1-5 words and reaggregating the performance data, you can spot trends you’d otherwise miss.
Review your data under Search terms > Search and Shopping. Adalysis supports n-gram analysis at the campaign and account level.
Here are four use cases to get you started:
High spend, no conversions
To find potentially wasted spend, create an n-gram filter for 0 conversions. Then sort the results by clicking the Cost column header.
You can then decide whether to select an n-gram and add it as a negative keyword. This lets you block waste across hundreds of queries at once.
Alternatively, you may change your organization by moving affected keywords to a different, more relevant ad group. Click a number in the Instance count column to see where your search terms are currently matching.
Monitoring new campaigns
When launching a new campaign, you often do not know what search terms Google will match to your keywords. N-grams help you find out quickly:
What terms appear most frequently?
Are these terms relevant?
Switch to Campaign n-grams and make sure you select your campaign. Then click the Instance count column header to sort by the most common patterns.
New keywords and product opportunities
N-gram analysis can also uncover growth opportunities.
For example, a business selling custom plates noticed the word 'wine' frequently in their search terms. They didn’t offer wine glasses, so they:
Added wine as a negative keyword initially
Discussed the demand internally
Launched a new product line
Removed the negative keyword to capture demand
Evaluating individual terms across your account
You can also analyze how specific words perform across all search terms. For example, question-based terms like how, what, and why often do poorly on mobile devices.
You can also check promotional terms like sale or discount or when reviewing messaging word choices.
Create a filter for a particular search term and use it to:
Identify low-performing intent types
Find high-performing terms to include in ads
Save filters and set alerts
Adalysis will audit your n-grams for potential negative keywords automatically. As always, you can customize the settings for your accounts.
You can also enable alerts when you save a new filter.
Further reading
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