Google ads keyword research

Google Ads Keyword Research

Currency & scope note (last reviewed 2026-07-19): Platform mechanics referenced here (character limits, campaign-type names, feature availability, thresholds, benchmark figures, policy specifics) reflect general practice as of the review date above and are not guaranteed current — ad platforms change quickly. Verify anything mechanical against the platform's live documentation before relying on it for a real launch, real spend, or a compliance-sensitive decision. This is an independent, unofficial resource, not affiliated with or endorsed by any platform named in it, and nothing here is legal, tax, or financial advice.

Purpose

Produce a rigorous, intent-classified keyword list with volume, cost, and competition context — using Keyword Planner methodology — deep enough to found campaign structure, budget forecasts, and negative keyword strategy on.

Trigger Conditions

• "Use Keyword Planner to find keywords for [product/service]"
• "What will this keyword cost / how much traffic could I get"
• "Forecast my campaign performance before I launch"
• "Expand my keyword list / find keywords I'm missing"

Required Inputs

• Product/service and target geography (volume and CPC are location-specific)
• Seed keywords or a landing page/domain to derive ideas from
• Monthly budget, if forecasting is wanted
• Whether this is for Search (exact keyword targeting) or informing PMax/Demand Gen themes (broader signal, not literal keyword bidding)

Core Capabilities

Keyword Idea Generation

• Seed-based expansion: starting from product/service terms and broadening via Keyword Planner's related-keyword suggestions
• URL-based expansion: deriving keyword ideas from a landing page or competitor domain's likely ranking terms
• Question and long-tail expansion for content-adjacent or informational-intent capture, separated from transactional terms

Volume & Cost Data

• Average monthly search volume (as a range, not a false-precision point estimate — Keyword Planner obfuscates exact figures for low-spend accounts)
• Top-of-page bid ranges (low/high) as a CPC expectation-setting tool, not a guaranteed price
• Competition level (low/medium/high) as an auction-crowding signal, distinct from actual conversion competitiveness

Intent Classification

• Sorting generated keywords into informational, navigational, commercial-investigation, and transactional buckets
• Prioritizing transactional/commercial-investigation terms for Search campaigns; routing informational terms to content/SEO or top-funnel Display/Demand Gen consideration instead of bidding them directly in a conversion-optimized Search campaign

Forecasting

• Using Keyword Planner's forecast tool (clicks, impressions, cost, conversions at a given bid/budget) to sanity-check a proposed budget before launch
• Framing forecasts as directional planning inputs, not performance guarantees — actual results depend on ad quality, landing page, and competition shifts the tool can't predict

Negative Keyword Seeding

• Identifying likely irrelevant terms during research (adjacent-but-wrong intent, free/DIY-seeking terms for a paid service, job-seeker terms for a company name) to pre-load as negatives before launch, rather than discovering the waste after spend

Workflow

1. Gather seed keywords, landing page/domain, and target geography.
2. Generate expanded keyword ideas from both seed terms and URL-based suggestions.
3. Pull volume, CPC range, and competition data for the expanded list.
4. Classify every keyword by intent; flag which belong in a conversion-focused Search campaign vs. which don't belong in paid Search at all.
5. Run a budget forecast if a budget figure is available, and flag if the forecast suggests the budget is materially under or over what's needed to gather meaningful data.
6. Produce a starter negative keyword list from the research pass.
7. Hand the finalized, intent-classified list to google-ads-campaign-builder for ad group structuring.

Outputs

• Keyword list with volume range, CPC range, and competition level per term
• Intent classification per keyword
• Budget forecast (clicks/cost/conversion estimate) if requested
• Starter negative keyword list
• Flag on any keyword with ambiguous or clearly wrong intent for the campaign's goal

Rules

• Never present Keyword Planner volume/CPC figures as precise guarantees — always frame as ranges/estimates that shift with real auction dynamics.

• Never hand a raw, unclassified keyword list to campaign building — intent classification is what prevents budget waste on the wrong search terms.

• Flag when total addressable search volume for the category is too low to support the stated budget/goal — this is a strategy-level finding, route it to google-ads-strategy.

• Verification gate: before this skill's output is used to spend real money, submit a compliance-sensitive claim, or go to a client as final, verify the mechanical specifics (limits, thresholds, policy rules) against current platform documentation and get explicit human sign-off — do not treat this skill's output as launch-ready without that check.

Related Skills

google-ads-campaign-builder (consumes this list for structure), google-ads-strategy (volume-informed budget/channel viability), google-ads-optimization (search terms report closes the loop on how actual queries matched this research).