How Do I See Search Terms in Performance Max?

For a long time Performance Max only showed you search categories, not the real words people typed. Google's own help page says PMax now gets "the same granular Search term data and capabilities previously only available in Search and Shopping campaigns".

So you get the real searches, with clicks, cost and conversions for each one. The data goes back to March 2023. Anything older does not show.

Two other views help too. Search terms insights groups your searches into themes and counts the ones the report hides. The channel performance report splits PMax spend by where the ads ran, like Search, Shopping, YouTube and Display. The steps below walk through the report first, because that is where you decide what to block.

The report leaves some searches out. Know the gaps before you trust the totals. If the rows add up to less than the campaign spend, this is usually why.

Sort the report by cost, highest first. Then read the top rows like a buyer would (I start with about 30, my rule of thumb). For each term ask one question: would a person typing this buy my product, at my price, today?

On store accounts, the losers tend to look the same. Words like "free", "cheap", "DIY", "how to", "used" and "repair". Other brands' names. The wrong product type, like "dog crate" when you sell dog beds. And searches for jobs, wholesale or a supplier, when you sell to shoppers.

Then do the money check. Say your target cost per sale is $30 (a made-up number, to show the math). A term that spent $45 with zero sales has had more than enough room. Block it. A term that spent $8 with zero sales has not had a fair shot yet. Leave it and look again in a week.

Watch your own brand name too. If PMax spends a lot on people searching your store by name, many of those buyers were coming anyway, and the ROAS looks better than it is. Google lets you add a brand exclusion for that.

After you block terms, keep an eye on volume. Google warns that too many exclusions can limit your reach. Block the clear losers, not everything you do not like the look of.

Doing it yourself is free and works fine. On a small account, a short weekly check in the report does the job. I check it weekly. If you want the raw data in a sheet, the Google Ads API serves PMax search terms through a view called campaign_search_term_view, so a script or a reporting tool can pull it. Rule tools like Adalysis also sell PMax tools that watch search terms and flag ones to add as negatives. If you are an agency running many accounts, I would point you there.

Scaley Media Buyer ($99/mo + 1% of total ad spend) is the one we build, so weigh that. It connects to Google Ads read-only. You ask "which Performance Max searches are wasting money?" and it reads your live search term data and shows you the waste right away, term by term, with the cost behind each one. It never changes a setting and never runs on its own. You add the negatives yourself. Only the Scaley Suite writes to an account, and only after an individual yes from you.

Scaley comes in two other levels. Scaley Consultant ($99/mo flat) reads a CSV or screenshot of the report you upload and connects to nothing. Scaley Suite ($199/mo + 4% of total ad spend) finds the dead terms and queues each negative keyword with the reason. Nothing goes live until you say yes to that one change. Every level starts with a 3-day free trial, card required.

ZenoX Media, my Google Ads agency, has run 400+ store accounts. If you want a person to run the whole account for you, that is what the agency does.