Optimization Best Practices: Keyword Insertion

Keyword insertion is an ad text feature that can improve your ad relevancy. This feature inserts a user’s search query into a part of your ad text that you choose, including your display URL. When a user sees your ad with their exact search term in it they will be more likely to click on your ad.

To use keyword insertion in your ads, place the following code into a section of your ad text: {KeyWord:Default Text} where “Default Text” is the backup text you will use in your ad. When your ad shows on Google.com, AdWords will automatically replace that text with the keyword that triggered the ad - unless the search term exceeds the character limit.

For example, if your ad group contained the following keywords: donate online, online donations, donate today and the user searched for online donations the ad below would appear with “Online Donations” in the headline. If the search term exceeded 25 characters, the default text “Donate Online Today” would appear in the headline.

Example:

Keyword insertion can be used with any text-based ad. Use keyword insertion with care and do not use it in place of proper ad group structure. It’s always important to create tightly themed ad groups, even when using this feature. If your ad group has keywords that do not follow the same theme, you can end up with poorly targeted ads.

For more information on keyword insertion please visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Janelle Kuhlman, Google Grants Team