Most trade enquiries come from searches you never chose

No. SoudCoh's analysis of reported trade campaign data found most enquiries arrived through searches the business never wrote down as keywords. The customer typed the symptom, the suburb or an odd phrasing, and a broader keyword caught it.

Key facts

• 59% of enquiries came from searches that were not on the keyword list, even allowing for plurals and word order.
• Those searches took 64% of search-term spend.
• An enquiry from one of them cost 1.19× as much as an enquiry from a search worded like an existing keyword.
• 54% of enquiries came from searches that received no more than two clicks in total.
• 33% of enquiries came from searches that appeared in only one calendar month.
• Only 11% of the searches that produced an enquiry through phrase or broad match were ever added as keywords in their own right.

The pattern holds in every trade in the sample, which makes discovery a structural feature of trade search rather than a quirk of one category.

How we measure. A search counts as discovered when its wording matched no keyword, allowing for plurals and word order. An enquiry is a recorded phone call or a submitted form.

Because a keyword is an instruction about meaning, not a list of exact phrases. Google matches every keyword to searches it judges to mean the same thing, or something related:

• Broad match reaches searches related to the keyword, including ones that share none of its words.
• Phrase match reaches searches that include the meaning of the keyword, with other words before or after it.
• Exact match reaches searches with the same meaning, including close variants such as reordered words, plurals and paraphrases. We cover this in detail in exact match is not exact.

Trade customers also rarely use the words the trade uses. A plumber writes hot water system replacement; the customer types no hot water and the suburb. An electrician writes switchboard upgrade; the customer types power keeps tripping. A cleaner writes end of lease clean; the tenant types bond back cleaning and the date they move out. Each of those is a real job, and none of them was on the launch-day keyword list.

That is the right way to think about a keyword list: as a starting hypothesis about how customers ask, not a map of demand. The map is the search terms report, and it keeps being redrawn.

Yes, with management. Discovered searches cost a little more per enquiry than the proven core, at 1.19×. That premium is the price of learning. Switching discovery off would not simply save it: many of those enquiries come from searches too rare to plan a keyword for, so they would be lost rather than bought more cheaply.

Two details from the sample explain where the premium comes from and how to shrink it:

• Discovered searches take a slightly larger share of spend than of enquiries. They took 64% of search-term spend against 59% of enquiries. Part of that gap is junk that has not yet been negated; part is relevant searches that have not converted yet.
• Three- and four-word searches convert most often. Three-word searches converted clicks into enquiries at 1.24× the rate of searches of five words or more. Across the sample the order ran three-word searches first, then four-word, then one- and two-word, with the longest searches last. Very long searches tend to be questions and research, so they need the tightest cleaning.

The practical answer is to keep the net open and harvest what it catches: promote the winners into keywords you can bid on and write for, and negate the patterns that never pay. Our guide to negative keywords that block customers covers the second half, because it is easy to overdo.

Because trade demand is episodic. A burst pipe, a failed safety inspection, a lease ending or a switchboard that trips in a storm each produces a search that is phrased once and never again. The data shows how much of the business sits in that long, thin tail:

None of these searches could have been planned for by name. They can only be reached by keywords with room to match, which is why an account built only on exact match leaves customers on the table.

There is a second limit. Google's search terms report only names the searches behind about 52% of spend in a typical trade Search campaign, so even a diligent reviewer is reading a sample. Our piece on why the search terms report hides half your spend explains what that means for control.

By promoting them. A search that is merely caught by a broader keyword cannot be bid up on its own, cannot have an ad written in its exact words and can be blocked by a stray negative without anyone noticing. A keyword can. Yet across the sample only 11% of the searches that produced an enquiry through phrase or broad match had ever been promoted, and even among searches with three or more enquiries only 33% had been.

A monthly promotion pass you can run yourself:

1. Open the search terms report for the campaign and pick a long date range, at least the last three months.
2. Add the Match type and Added/Excluded columns, then filter to searches with at least one conversion that are not already keywords.
3. Sort by conversions. Anything that has converted more than once is a candidate.
4. Add each repeat converter as an exact keyword in the ad group whose service it names. Google prefers an exact keyword that is identical to the search, so this also routes the search to the right ad and page.
5. Group related winners. Several converting searches about the same job, such as gas hot water or ceiling fan installation, deserve their own ad group, ads and landing page rather than being squeezed into an existing one.
6. Write the customer's words back to them. Use the promoted wording in a headline and on the page.

Build control first, then leave deliberate room to discover. That is the method SoudCoh uses, set out in full in our white paper Launch, discover, control:

• One ad group per service, each with a tight keyword set, its own ads and a matching service page, so a caught search lands somewhere that answers it.
• Exact match on the proven core, phrase match for discovery. Phrase match keeps the service word fixed and lets the customer add the suburb, the urgency or the symptom. Phrase match produced 34% of enquiries across the sample.
• Broad match only where it has earned a place, meaning solid call and form tracking and a daily search-term review.
• Location set to people physically in the service area, not people merely interested in it, and Search campaigns kept off the Display Network.
• A standing weekly review of the search terms report, because new phrasings keep arriving month after month.

The balance shifts by trade. Plumbing and other home services found the largest share of enquiries outside the keyword list, so a plumbing account with no room to match gives up the most. See how we set this up for plumbing businesses, electricians, cleaning businesses, HVAC businesses and pest control, or read how we run Search campaigns.

The same finding asks different things of different businesses:

• Owner-operators do not need a bigger keyword list. A short monthly promotion pass like the one above, plus a weekly look for junk, is where the value is.
• Growing businesses with a marketing person should make promotion a standing task with a record of what was added and why, so the account's knowledge survives a change of staff or agency.
• Multi-site brands should share winning wording between locations. A symptom search that converts in one region is worth testing in the next; the suburb names change, but customers describe the same problems in much the same words.

For everyone, judge a campaign on enquiries and cost per enquiry rather than on how tidy the visible search terms look. A campaign with a messy report and a healthy cost per enquiry is working; a spotless report with few enquiries is not.

What is the difference between a keyword and a search term in Google Ads?

A keyword is the instruction you give Google about which searches you want. A search term is what the person actually typed when your ad showed. In SoudCoh's research sample of Australian trade advertisers, 59% of enquiries came from search terms that were not on the keyword list, so the two lists are rarely the same.

Why are my Google Ads showing for searches I didn't add?

Every match type now matches on meaning rather than on exact wording. Broad and phrase match reach searches that include or relate to your keyword, and even exact match reaches close variants with the same meaning. That is how a keyword such as blocked drain plumber can bring in a search you never wrote down.

Should I switch to exact match so my ads only show for my keywords?

No. Exact match still matches close variants, and an exact-only build misses the long tail: 54% of enquiries in SoudCoh's research sample came from searches with no more than two clicks in total. Keep exact match for the proven core and phrase match for discovery, then review the search terms.

Do enquiries from unplanned searches cost more?

A little. In SoudCoh's research sample, an enquiry from a search that was not on the keyword list cost 1.19× as much as one from a search worded like an existing keyword. That is the price of learning, and the way to work it down is to promote winning searches to keywords.

How often should I review the Google Ads search terms report?

Weekly for junk and monthly for promotion. New wording never stops arriving: from the third month of running onwards, 25% of each month's enquiries still came from searches that had not appeared in any earlier month.