Find duplicate keywords

It's best to avoid having duplicate keywords in your account. We'll show only one ad per advertiser for a particular keyword, so there's no need to include the same keywords in different ad groups or campaigns.

Make sure you use a keyword only once throughout your whole account, including variations of your broad match keywords (as well as your phrase and exact match keywords if you haven't chosen to narrow your phrase and exact match targeting). For example, the broad match keywords red car and car red are duplicates and will compete against each other. Since the better performing keyword will trigger your ad more often, you'll want to remove the duplicate that performs worse.

Here's how to find and remove duplicate keywords:

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
2. Click "All online campaigns" in the left navigation bar.
3. Click the Keywords tab to see all of the keywords in your account
4. Click the "Keyword" column name to sort your keywords alphabetically. You can also click the "Match type" column name to sort your keywords by match type. Then, review your keywords to see if any of them are duplicates.
5. If you have a duplicate keyword, you'll want to remove the one that perform worse. To do so, select the checkbox next to the keyword, click the Edit drop-down menu and select "Remove."

Example

Let's say you sort your keywords by match type and see that your account contains the broad match keywords red car and car red. Then, you review the clickthrough rate (CTR) for each of these keywords and see that red car has a higher CTR. Since your advertising goal is to get clicks on your ads, you decide to remove car red because it has a lower CTR.

Tip

You can also use AdWords Editor, a free downloadable application for managing your account, to find duplicate keywords in your account.

Using filters to improve your keywords

Filters are a quick way to sort your keyword performance data and identify low-performing keywords. You can filter your keyword data by Status to see which keywords have low search volume, or maybe those that aren't showing your ads because they've been disapproved. Then, you can change your keyword with low search volume to a more general variation to help increase your traffic. Or, follow our advertising policies to fix any disapproved keywords. Here are some other filters you can use to see poor-performing keywords:

• Try using the Quality Score filter to see which keywords have a low Quality Score. For example, you can choose to see keywords with a Quality Score less than 3. Then, you can make changes to your keywords, such as making them more relevant to your ads or landing page, to help improve their Quality Scores.
• Filter your keywords by clickthrough rate (CTR) to see which keywords get you a lot of impressions, but few clicks. For example, you can filter keywords with a clickthrough rate that's less than 1%, and then make changes to those keywords so they're more relevant to your ads.
• Filter your keywords to see which ones are below your first page bid estimate. Then, you can increase the cost-per-click (CPC) bids for keywords that aren't showing ads on the first page of Google search results based on your first page bid estimate. Try using automated rules to automatically raise your keyword bids when they are below your first page bid estimate.