How many keywords per ad group should I have in Google Ads?

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords, with all campaigns in view, and set the date range to the last 30 days.
2. 02Use the filter button above the table to show enabled keywords only.
3. 03Select the name of the Ad group column to sort the table by ad group, so each ad group’s keywords sit together.
4. 04To count them, select the download icon above the table, then Download, and choose a format such as .csv or Google Sheets. In the sheet, count the rows for each ad group, and how many of them have no clicks.
5. 05Back in Google Ads, read the Status column of the keywords that took no click. It says where Google itself is holding one back.

Google Ads Editor counts without a download. Select Ad groups in its type list, start typing Count in the advanced search box and choose Function : COUNT(...), then tick Keywords under Keywords and targeting. Google’s own example uses it to find the ad groups holding fewer than five approved keywords.

No figure of Google’s says which ad group is too large, so use your account’s own. The usual line for an outlier is the third quartile plus 1.5 times the spread between the first quartile and the third. With each ad group’s count in column C of the sheet:

=QUARTILE(C:C,3)+1.5*(QUARTILE(C:C,3)-QUARTILE(C:C,1))

Cedar & Pine’s quartiles are 4.75 and 9.25, so the line falls at 9.25 + 1.5 × 4.5, or 16 keywords, and only Sofas — general is past it.

Size alone isn’t a fault. A large ad group whose keywords all take clicks is working, and an account built of large ad groups has none that stands out. What marks dead weight is the last column: an ad group past the line where 74% of the keywords took no click, in an account where 26% of the rest took none.

The Status column gives Google’s reason. A keyword it limits reads Eligible (limited), with one of these beside it:

• Low search volume: the keyword is associated with very little search traffic, so it isn’t eligible to show often. Google says it may be reactivated if searches for it increase.
• Rarely shown due to low Quality Score: the keyword isn’t showing often because its Quality Score is low. The low Quality Score guide covers which part to fix.
• Below first page bid estimate: the keyword is active and can show ads, but isn’t showing on the first page.

Google clears out the longest idle itself. A keyword created more than 13 months ago that has had no impressions in the past 13 months may be paused automatically. It then reads Paused, with Keyword paused due to low activity beside it. You can enable it again, and Google pauses it again if it gets no impressions in the next 3 months.

Google recommends the same clean-up. Remove non-serving keywords appears among its recommendations when some of your keywords have had no traffic for a year or more, and its guidance on account structure asks you to clean up duplicate and non-serving keywords, since the excess makes an account harder to manage and more error prone.

A year is Google’s line. Thirty days is a faster read and a rougher one: a keyword added in the last few weeks, or sold in another season, hasn’t had its time. So widen the date range to a year before you pause a keyword that may be seasonal. To pause, tick the keywords, select Edit at the top of the table, and pause them.

Sort the large ad group’s keywords into themes, each one a page or category of your site that an ad could be written for. Leave in the old ad group the theme its ads already answer. For each of the others:

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Ad groups and select the plus button to create an ad group in the same campaign.
2. 02Write its ads for the theme, with the theme’s page as their final URL. The section on ads below says how many.
3. 03Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords, tick the theme’s keywords, and select Copy from the Edit menu. Open Edit again and select Paste.
4. 04Pick the new ad group in the ad group picker and select Done. Choose whether the keywords keep their bids and final URLs, tick Pause new keywords after pasting if you want to check them before they run, and select Paste.
5. 05Pause the originals in the old ad group, so each keyword runs in one place. Left enabled, they are duplicates, which the duplicate keywords guide covers.

A keyword that moves this way keeps some things and leaves others behind:

• Its statistics stay behind. The pasted keyword is a copy. Google’s Editor help says a keyword pasted into a new ad group doesn’t bring its performance statistics, such as impressions and clicks, so the copy starts at zero and the paused original keeps the history.
• Its quality is judged the same, until the ad changes. Google says there is no ad group-level, campaign-level or account-level Quality Score, and that breaking keywords into new ad groups without changing the ad text or landing page has no effect on their quality. A keyword moved to an ad group with new ad text can see its ad quality estimate, and so its Quality Score, change. That is the purpose of a split: ads written for the theme.
• Bidding carries on. Google says its bidding algorithms learn at the level of the search rather than the keyword, so when you move keywords to a different ad group they don’t relearn from scratch: what they learned about a search elsewhere in your account still applies.

A single-keyword ad group, or SKAG, holds exactly one keyword, so its ad can repeat that keyword’s words and its bid applies to that keyword alone. The idea rests on one keyword standing for one search, and in Google Ads it no longer does.

In March 2017 Google widened exact match to take in searches that reorder a keyword’s words, or add or drop function words such as prepositions and articles. Today it says every match type is eligible to match close variants, with no way to opt out, and that an exact match keyword shows on searches with the same meaning or the same intent as the keyword. The close variants Google names include misspellings, singular and plural forms, reordered words with the same meaning, implied words, synonyms and paraphrases. So [linen sofa] and [linen sofas] in two ad groups are one set of searches split between two ads.

Under Smart Bidding, Google’s advice is to move single-keyword ad groups into themed ad groups, because grouping keywords by theme makes it easier for Google to understand the keywords, select the best one, and decide which ad should serve for each search. It asks the same of match types: one keyword held as exact, phrase and broad belongs in one ad group, since the copies split the data Smart Bidding works with. Google goes on to suggest keeping only the broad match one, and the broad match guide covers when that pays.

Where you set bids by hand, one exact or phrase keyword to an ad group still does what it was built for: one bid on the searches that keyword matches. One broad keyword doesn’t. Google says it’s critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match, because every search is different and a bid should reflect each one.

Google asks for at least 2 responsive search ads in each ad group, each rated Good or Excellent for Ad Strength and each with a final URL of its own. An ad group can run 3 enabled responsive search ads at most, and Google’s page on organizing ad groups recommends at least 3 ads in each. Its own figures: advertisers who add a second responsive search ad see 6.6% more conversions on average at a similar cost per conversion, and those who add a third, 3.7% more.

The reason is ad rotation. On its Optimize setting, which Smart Bidding always uses, Google favors the ad it expects to perform better in each auction. One ad leaves it nothing to choose between. More than three takes another kind of ad beside the responsive ones, usually expanded text ads still running, and spreads the same impressions thinner, so it takes longer to see which ad converts worse. The ad strength guide covers the rating, and the expanded text ads guide the ads you can no longer edit.

Below that, an ad group has to be able to serve at all. Go to Campaigns › Ad groups and read the Status column:

• Incomplete: you haven’t set up a necessary part of the ad group, such as keywords or ads, and its ads aren’t running.
• Not eligible: among Google’s reasons are an ad group with no ads or with all of them paused, one with no keywords, and one whose ads are all disapproved.

The same holds a level up. Google marks a campaign Not eligible when it has no ad groups, when all its ad groups are paused or deleted, or when all its ads or all its keywords are. Google’s recommendations Add ads to each ad group and Add keywords to each ad group list the same gaps.

Every day Goldbeater counts the enabled keywords in every Search ad group of a campaign that took a click in the last 30 days, and reads which of them took one. It raises an ad group on two lines, both your account’s own:

• Far larger than your others. It holds more keywords than the line for an outlier among your Search ad groups, the quartile sum above, so an account built of large ad groups has none that stands out.
• Mostly idle. More than half its keywords took no click in the 30 days, and more than chance would leave at the rate the keywords in your ad groups of usual size go without one.

That is the table’s first row: 46 keywords, 34 of them idle, against 26% elsewhere. The finding lists the keywords that carry the ad group, by cost, then the idle ones, with Google’s own status beside each. Goldbeater offers pausing the idle keywords and doesn’t recommend it, because 30 days can’t tell a dead keyword from one added last week.

Whether an ad group’s keywords belong together is a separate question from how many it holds. Goldbeater answers it with Google’s ad relevance rating, keyword by keyword, whatever the ad group’s size, and the low Quality Score guide shows that finding.

The same daily read covers what an ad group needs, one finding for each campaign and shortfall:

• No ad Google shows: an enabled Search, Shopping or Display ad group with no enabled ad, or only disapproved ones.
• No keywords: a standard Search ad group with no keyword. Goldbeater doesn’t ask it of an ad group where Google’s AI Max matches searches beyond the keywords.
• One ad: a Search ad group that served in the last 8 weeks on a single ad, under Google’s ask of two.
• One keyword: under Smart Bidding, an ad group holding a single keyword, in one match type or several. Without Smart Bidding, only where that keyword is broad match.

Those are the table’s last two rows. Which ad group a lone keyword belongs in is a judgement of its theme, so the finding says where to move it and Goldbeater drafts no change.

Goldbeater also raises a Search ad group that showed more than three enabled ads over the last 8 weeks, or a Display one more than four, Google’s number for each, where its conversions are too few to tell any ad from luck even if it converted half as often as the others, and fewer ads on the same impressions could be told apart. The finding says how many ads those conversions can compare, never fewer than Google asks for. And it raises an enabled campaign Google reports isn’t serving because it has no ad group or every ad group is paused, or for Performance Max no asset group, and offers pausing the campaign.

The audit checklist has each of these lines with where to find it in Google Ads.

How many keywords should an ad group have in Google Ads?

Google’s help pages give no number for a Search ad group. Google asks for a narrow theme in each one, such as a page or category of your site, so that the ad group’s ads answer every keyword in it. As many keywords as fit one theme and take clicks is the right number.

Does Google recommend 5 to 20 keywords per ad group?

For Display Network campaigns, yes: its guidelines for Display keywords say to create a set of 5 to 20 keywords that relate to the ads in the ad group. Its pages on Search keywords and on organizing ad groups give no figure.

What is the maximum number of keywords in an ad group?

An ad group can hold 20,000 targeting items, and keywords count toward them. An account can hold 5 million. Both are limits, not advice.

How many ad groups should a campaign have?

As many as it has themes. Google’s advice is one narrow theme to an ad group, starting from your site, where each ad group stands for a page or category. A campaign can hold up to 20,000 ad groups.

How many responsive search ads should an ad group have?

At least 2, each rated Good or Excellent for Ad Strength, and 3 at most: Google lets an ad group run 3 enabled responsive search ads. Google says advertisers who add a second see 6.6% more conversions on average at a similar cost per conversion.

Are single-keyword ad groups still worth using?

Rarely. Every match type matches close variants, with no way to opt out, so one exact keyword stands for many searches, and under Smart Bidding Google’s advice is to move single-keyword ad groups into themed ones. On manual bids, one exact or phrase keyword to an ad group still gives you one bid on a narrow set of searches.

Does moving a keyword to another ad group reset its Quality Score?

Not by the move. Google says breaking keywords into new ad groups without changing the ad text or landing page has no effect on their quality. With new ad text, the estimate can change. The keyword’s statistics don’t move with it: the copy in the new ad group starts at zero.