Keyword research for Google Ads is sorting work, not collecting work. A list of 300 terms is assembled in an afternoon. The question is which of them you actually want to pay for, because every keyword in the account is a standing offer: you are bidding for someone with that query to land on your site and then do something.
The short answer: keyword research for Google Ads means finding, evaluating and grouping the search terms your ads should show for, and excluding from the start the terms you do not want to pay for. In 2026 one more decision is part of it: how much room you give Google's AI through broad match and AI Max. Menu paths and features in this guide follow the Google Ads help as of September 2026.
This guide walks the process in six steps, from the seed list to the structure in ad groups, and then puts the free keyword tools in perspective. Every example is constructed and shows how a list is built, not the numbers of a real account. I deliberately quote no search volumes: they depend on market, location and period, and a number in a blog post is wrong a few months later.
What keyword research means in Google Ads
The key difference to research for organic content: in Google Ads every impression costs money the moment someone clicks. Reach is therefore not a value in itself. A high volume term with diffuse intent is a cost item in the account, while a rare term with clear intent can be the most profitable line on the list.
So put three questions to every keyword:
- What does this person want right now? Buy, compare, understand, or simply look something up?
- Can I deliver exactly that? Does my offer match the wording, or do I sell something adjacent?
- Is there a measurable action afterwards? Call, form, booking, order.
Only when all three answers hold does a term belong in the account. A constructed example from the trades shows how far apart the intents sit behind similar words:
| Search query (constructed) | Likely intent | What it means for Google Ads |
|---|---|---|
| radiator not getting warm | understand the problem, check it yourself | website content rather than an ad |
| emergency plumber near me | hire someone immediately | high priority, clear action |
| heat pump cost | comparison, decision still open | useful with a proper advice page |
| plumber apprenticeship | job or training | exclude |
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Four terms from one industry, four different roles. That is the core of it: search intent beats search volume.
Step 1: A seed list from your offer and customer questions
The seed list is the starting point every tool derives its suggestions from. Its quality decides the quality of every later step. Good sources are:
- Your service pages. Every service you genuinely want to sell is a seed. Anything you cannot deliver does not belong on the list.
- Quotes and invoices from recent months. They show what actually earns money, not just what the website claims.
- Phone notes and email enquiries. This is where you find your customers' own words. People rarely write "potable water installation", they write "get a water pipe fitted".
- Google autocomplete. Type your main term and read what Google adds. Those are real formulations, not estimates.
- The "People also ask" and "Related searches" blocks on the results page. Especially productive for questions asked before a purchase.
15 to 30 seeds are plenty. More adds little, because Keyword Planner derives dozens of variants from each seed anyway. What matters is breadth: take the technical term and the layman's word, singular and plural, with and without a location.
A constructed example for a bathroom fitting company: bathroom renovation, bathroom refurbishment, bathroom remodel, accessible bathroom, walk in shower installation, plumber, burst pipe, emergency plumber, water pipe installation.
Step 2: Keyword Planner step by step
Keyword Planner is Google's own research tool and it costs nothing. You need a Google Ads account, but no running campaign. Here is the way in:
- Create an account or sign in. During setup switch to expert mode and skip campaign creation, otherwise the wizard pushes you into a campaign you do not want yet.
- Open the tool. Click "Tools" in the top navigation, then choose "Keyword Planner" in the "Planning" section.
- Pick a mode. There are two tiles: "Discover new keywords" gives you ideas, "Get search volume and forecasts" evaluates a list you already have. For a first round of research, take the first tile.
- Pick an entry point. Inside "Discover new keywords" you get the tabs "Start with keywords" and "Start with a website". The website route is especially useful pointed at a competitor's site.
- Set language and location. Both sit directly above the results table and are frequently preset wrongly. Local providers should look at city level instead of country level, because the ranking of terms differs by region.
- Read the columns. The relevant ones are "Avg. monthly searches", "Three month change", "YoY change", "Competition" and the two bid columns for the low and high range. "Competition" describes competition among advertisers, not difficulty in the organic results.
- Filter instead of scrolling. Under "Add filter" you exclude terms that do not concern you, for example "job", "training", "salary" or competitor brand names. The option to hide brand terms saves further passes.
- Take the selection over. Tick the relevant rows and add them to the plan, or download them as CSV. That CSV is the working basis for step 3.
What "Avg. monthly searches" actually measures is described in Google's help on Keyword Planner statistics (as of September 2026): by default it is the average over the last twelve months, counted for the keyword and its close variants and only for exact match searches. Bids and budget play no part in this number, but they do in the forecasts. If the idea list gets too long, use "Refine keywords": the planner groups the suggestions by topics and brands, so you can deselect whole blocks instead of single rows.
Two things you need to know when reading the numbers. First, the bid columns are estimates from past auctions and not a price commitment: what you end up paying depends on the quality of your ad and landing page, location, device and the other bidders at the moment of the auction. Second, the forecast function is a model that knows neither your ad copy nor your landing page. So hold the bid range against your own maths: the Google Ads budget calculator combines click price, conversion rate and target values into a magnitude you can set against the forecast.
Step 3: Sort by search intent
This is where a pile of ideas becomes a decision list. Sort every term into one of four groups:
| Group | Recognisable by (constructed examples) | How to handle it |
|---|---|---|
| Action | "bathroom renovation quote", "plumber near me", "emergency today" | own campaign, highest priority |
| Comparison | "bathroom renovation cost", "bath or shower", "compare providers" | own ad group with an advice page |
| Information | "how to seal a shower", "how long does a bathroom take" | usually website content, not an ad |
| Brand | your own company name, a competitor's name | separate campaign, separate logic |
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The line does not run between "good" and "bad" but between different jobs. Action terms bring enquiries and cost the most per click. Comparison terms need a page that genuinely compares, otherwise the visitor bounces immediately. Information terms are rarely worth the money while the budget is limited. And bidding on your own brand name is a strategic question of its own, not part of service research.
Location is a lever in itself. "Near me", "in my area" and city names signal that someone wants to hire locally. Keep those variants separate from the generic terms, because they deserve different ad copy.
Step 4: Set the match types
The match type decides how far Google may drift from your keyword. There are three, and the way you write the keyword is the setting:
| Match type | Notation | Triggers on (per Google's help) | Control |
|---|---|---|---|
| exact match | [bathroom renovation london] | searches with the same meaning or the same intent | high |
| phrase match | "bathroom renovation london" | searches that include the meaning of your keyword | medium |
| broad match | bathroom renovation london | searches related to your keyword, also drawing on further signals | low |
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Exact does not mean literal: even inside square brackets Google serves reorderings, spelling variants and same-meaning formulations. The old broad match modifier no longer exists, its role was absorbed by phrase match. The definitions in the table follow Google's help on keyword match types (as of September 2026); the details sit in the glossary under keyword match types and in the comparison broad match vs. exact match.
In my experience this order works: start with exact and phrase match for the core terms. That way you learn in the first weeks which formulations actually bring enquiries, without losing budget to spread. Broad match is a tool for later, once conversion tracking runs cleanly, a bid strategy optimises on conversions and a maintained exclusion list exists. Without those three conditions the setting mainly buys reach. Google itself explicitly recommends broad match in combination with Smart Bidding.
Broad match and AI Max: where things stand in 2026
In 2026 the match type question gained a second layer. According to Google's help, AI Max for Search campaigns is a campaign-level option that bundles three things: search term matching built from broad match and keywordless technology, automatic customisation of your ad text, and final URL expansion to other pages of your website.
Two dates matter for your research. According to the Google Ads & Commerce Blog (April 2026, updated in June 2026), from September 2026 Google automatically upgrades Search campaigns to AI Max if they use automatically created assets and/or the campaign-level broad match setting. Dynamic Search Ads follow from February 2027. So the upgrade affects individual campaigns with those settings, not every account.
Your keyword list does not become redundant. According to Google's help on keyword prioritisation, Google prefers an exact match keyword that is identical to the search query. Having your most important terms in the account as exact match therefore remains the cleanest control. For everything AI Max finds beyond that, Google gives you these levers: brand inclusions and exclusions, locations of interest, URL inclusions and exclusions, and negative keywords. What the upgrade means for your account in practice and how to review it is covered in my post on the AI Max upgrade in Google Ads.
Step 5: Negative keywords from day one
Negative keywords are not a tidy-up task for later, they are part of the setup. Every campaign starts with a base list, otherwise you spend the first week paying for queries that could never turn into a job. Typical categories:
- Jobs and training: job, jobs, vacancy, apprenticeship, salary, internship
- Do it yourself: how to, diy, tutorial, youtube, video, myself
- Free and used: free, cheap, second hand, used
- Wrong audience: private or commercial, depending on who you want to keep out
- Knowledge instead of purchase: what is, meaning, definition, wikipedia, forum reviews
- Wrong location: cities and regions you do not serve, even if location targeting already excludes them
Where you put the list makes a difference. Terms that apply to your whole account belong in a shared list: "Tools", then "Shared library", then "Negative keyword lists". You then link that list to all campaigns. Specific exclusions, for example to keep two ad groups cleanly apart, go directly onto campaign or ad group level.
For terms that should never serve anywhere in the account, there are also account-level negative keywords: "Admin", then "Account settings", then "Negative keywords". According to Google's help (as of September 2026) they apply to the Search and Shopping inventory of Search, Performance Max, Shopping, App, Smart and Local campaigns, with up to 1,000 terms. Candidates are the classics such as "job", "apprenticeship" or "free". Google lists the remaining limits in its help on negative keywords: up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign, up to 20 shared lists per account and up to 5,000 terms per list.
Negative keywords also behave more strictly than normal ones: do not assume that every spelling variant is automatically covered. Instead check in the search terms report whether an excluded term reappears in a different spelling, and add it then. The system behind it sits in the glossary under negative keywords.
Step 6: Structure in ad groups
The best list is worth little if everything lands in one ad group. An ad group can only carry one message, so each group holds exactly one theme with a matching landing page.
A constructed example for the bathroom fitting company:
- Ad group "Bathroom renovation": [bathroom renovation london], [bathroom remodel london], "bathroom renovation cost london". Landing page: the bathroom renovation service page.
- Ad group "Accessible bathroom": [accessible bathroom], [walk in shower installation], "barrier free bathroom conversion". Landing page: the accessibility subpage.
- Ad group "Emergency": [burst pipe emergency], [emergency plumber london], "plumber emergency today". Landing page: emergency page with the phone number at the top.
Five to fifteen closely related keywords per group is a sound frame. The rule behind it is simple: if you cannot write one headline that fits every keyword in the group, the group is too broad. Isolating single keywords into their own groups, as the SKAG model prescribed, rarely pays off today, because the variant logic of match types merges again what you separated by hand.
Free keyword tools: what works and what does not
The question about a free keyword tool has an honest answer: free tools are enough to start with, but none of them delivers hard numbers.
| Tool | What it gives you | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Keyword Planner | ideas, magnitudes, bid ranges | only coarse ranges without an active campaign, similar terms merged |
| Autocomplete | genuine wording from the search box | no volumes, personalised and regionally influenced |
| "People also ask" | questions asked before the decision | no volumes |
| Search Console | real queries for your website with impressions and clicks | organic data only, only for pages that already rank |
| Google Trends | relative curves, seasonality, regions | no absolute numbers |
| Search terms report | real queries from your own account | requires running campaigns |
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The most important point concerns Keyword Planner itself: without an active campaign with meaningful spend, Google shows search volume only as ranges, for example 1,000 to 10,000 searches per month. Finer values appear once campaigns run continuously in the account. On top of that the planner groups similar terms and spellings into one value, so your actual queries are spread more finely than the table suggests.
Paid tools change less about that than their homepages promise: they model search volume and click prices from their own data sources and therefore also stay in estimate territory. Their value lies in the view of competitors and in the convenience of large lists. For the question of which keyword brings you enquiries, there is only one reliable source, and that is your own account.
Keyword analysis for running campaigns
As soon as ads are serving, the work shifts from estimating to measuring. Two views carry this part.
The search terms report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads. You find it in the left menu under "Campaigns" in the "Insights and reports" section at "Search terms"; in older views it sits next to the keyword table. The routine is unspectacular and still effective: once a week sort by cost descending, work through the top rows, add fitting queries as keywords of their own and exclude the unfitting ones. After a few weeks this report tells you better than any tool which language your customers use.
Two details from Google's help on the search terms report (as of September 2026) are worth knowing. First, the report is never complete: Google omits search terms with too few searches for privacy reasons. Second, the "Match type" column shows which match type triggered a search term. If a campaign runs with AI Max, the matching rows show "AI Max" there according to Google's help, and a dedicated view called "Search terms and ad combinations" shows the search terms together with the ad combinations that served. Poor matches can be added straight from the report as a negative keyword or, with AI Max, as an excluded URL. What the terms in the report mean is explained in the glossary under search terms report.
The status column of the keyword table tells you whether a keyword is serving at all. "Enabled" means eligible, and on top of that there are status reasons such as "Low search volume" that effectively stop delivery. Such keywords are not automatically wrong, they are simply too rare: sometimes a slightly broader term in the same group helps. The possible states and their meaning sit in the glossary under keyword status.
Judging individual keywords takes patience and a window that holds enough data. Pausing a keyword after ten clicks is not optimisation, it is a reaction to randomness. More useful is the view of cost without conversion across several weeks. Which levers come next is collected in my 20 strategies for Google Ads optimisation.
The most common keyword research mistakes
- Sorting by search volume. It is the most eye-catching column in the table and the least important one for selection. Sort by intent first, then by volume.
- Thinking in industry jargon. What your brochure says is rarely what people type. Your customers' words are in their emails.
- Throwing everything into one ad group. Broad groups force generic ads, and generic ads get weaker relevance ratings.
- Exclusions only after the first invoice. The base list belongs before launch, not into the repair work.
- Treating research as a one-off. Offers change and so does wording. A fixed weekly slot for the search terms report replaces every big relaunch.
- Broad match without measurement. Without working conversion tracking there is no basis for asking whether the extra reach achieved anything.
- Competitor brands without a plan. Bidding on other brand names is allowed but expensive and delicate. That is a strategic decision, not a by-product of research.
- Leaving the AI Max upgrade unchecked. If you use campaign-level broad match or automatically created assets, go through the rows with the match type "AI Max" in the search terms report after the upgrade, before the first weeks of budget run through it.
Conclusion
A good keyword list is short, ordered and justified. It grows out of what you really sell, gets extended in Keyword Planner with formulations you would not have hit yourself, and is then sorted by intent. Match types govern how much drift you allow, negative keywords govern what must never happen, and the ad groups make sure the ad matches the search.
The rest is observation. No tool knows in advance which keyword brings you enquiries. Only the search terms report shows that, and it keeps showing it.
If you would rather hand this part over: I take on setup and ongoing Google Ads management from €1,000 per month. If you only need an assessment of your existing structure, the Google Ads audit from €500 is the smaller entry point. Questions are welcome through the contact form.
