One good question left in the comments of our ‘Keywords and Queries’ post was: Can’t you get query-by-keyword info from the Google Adwords ‘Search Query Performance’ report?

The Search Query Performance report is the closest thing you can get from Google, or any of the engines as far as I’m aware, but it has several limitations.

First, it can’t associate queries with keywords. It’s a report for an entire campaign which means many ad-groups each full of keywords – often thousands. I’d argue that not knowing which keyword was matched to which query removes much (but certainly not all) of the utility of this report.

Second, Google groups large quantities of queries into buckets by match-type and hides the actual queries from you, listing only ‘other unique queries’.

Imaging your monthly credit card statement showed transaction detail for 50% of your purchases and lumped the rest in three groups based on size of the individual invoice (<$50, $50-$100, >$100) and just listed ‘Other Merchants’. Not a great way to review your budget is it?

Comparing the Google Report with a Campaign-By-Query report in Omniture SiteCatalyst (using the DB Universal Sources Vista Rule) shows Google disclosing only 38 unique keywords where Omniture lists 167 for the same period in one of our ad-groups.

And since Omniture can’t detect match-type differences (because Google doesn’t share that information via URL variables or their API), even that number is a bit low.

With a clear view of this level of detail (even at the campaign level, and moreso when we see which queries triggered which keywords) it’s possible to improve our ad-groups, negatives, text-ads, and even landing pages.

Next time I’ll dive deeper into making full use the information provided in keyword-by-query reports.