28 Genius Google Ads Filters For Better Performance

Raise your hand if you like wasting time on mundane tasks when there’s a smarter, more efficient way to get things done. 

*crickets*

No one?

DUH.

You’re here because 👏 time 👏 is 👏 money 👏 

So let’s get into it. Let’s save you precious minutes/hours/days, crank up that money meter, and get jiggy efficient with it.

Google Ads filters are one of the best ways to quickly identify optimization opportunities in your Google Ads account–in other words, ways to stop wasting money faster.

In this article, we’ll explain everything you need to know about Google Ads filters, including what they are, how to use them, and plenty of examples of our favorite Google Ads filters you can use for your own account. 

Google Ads filters allow you to set specific criteria for Campaigns, Ad Groups, and/or Keywords to help you monitor performance at each account level.

With Google Ads filters, you don’t have to manually comb through rows upon rows of data to find what you need to look at to assess performance. With a few quick keystrokes, you’ll get to the most important information in the blink of an (unstrained) eye.

They’re super easy to learn and apply—and the time and headaches they’ll save you are worth their weight in gold.

There’s really no reason why you shouldn’t be using Google Ads filters. They allow you to group data in such a way that you’ll immediately know how to optimize your campaigns upon logging into your account. Having filters in place enables you to improve efficiency while optimizing for more conversions in one fell swoop. 

If you’re convinced that Google Ads filters are worth trying out, let’s move on to how to use them. Click on the Campaigns link in the left-hand menu to open the statistics table. The filter icon shows what filters you’re currently using; you can add a new one using the “Add Filter” link.

The location of filters at the campaign level

Easy to find, right? You can also find the same filter menu at the ad group level, keyword level, ad level, and more.

Once you click on the “Add Filter” button, a drop-down window will pop up. This is where you’ll see built-in filter options, including any you’ve created yourself.

Here’s what this looks like on the screen:

Now that you know where to find them, there are just a handful of things you should know that will help you out when creating Google Ads filters. These are things that may seem obvious once you’re accustomed to using Google Ads filters, but might not be immediately apparent to first-time filter users. 

Here’s a quick refresher:

• > Greater than: All data with a value higher than a number you choose
• > = Greater than or equal to: All data with a value that’s either higher than a number you choose or equal to it 
• < Less than: All data with a value lower than a number you choose
• < = Less than or equal to: All data with a value lower than a number you choose or equal to it

Pretty simple stuff, but those carrots can be confusing if you don’t use them a lot.

Many filters require you to input a number and specify one of the above conditions–for example if you want to look at keywords with clicks greater than or equal to 5. 

Other filters will have you input text. For example, say you wanted to review all campaigns for a certain product. In this case, you’d input the campaign name into the campaign name filter: 

Many text filters allow you to look for multiple strings of text at once, and you would do this by entering one unique value per line. For example, one campaign name per line, or one word per line.

Google Ads filter options vary depending on the account view you’re looking at (e.g., Campaign, Ad Group, Keyword, etc.). For example, some filters on the Campaign level are different from those on the Ad Group level and vice versa. However, some filter categories, like Performance, Conversions, and Attributes, are available to use with most views.  

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Just because a filter exists doesn’t mean you have to use it. If your goals for boosting ad group performance include a particular cost-per-acquisition (CPA), average cost,  or cost-per-click (CPC), don’t waste your time configuring filters that focus on impressions. Remember that filters are only effective when you use them to hone in on data that will help you optimize for a better outcome—which should be tied to a business objective.

Maybe you want to drill down into very specific data (for example, a holiday campaign that has garnered more than five conversions in a given time period with a CPA under $50). Just follow these steps to add multiple restrictions within a single filter in any view:

1. To start, click the “Add Filter” button (in the row with the filter icon at the top of the statistics table), then choose your filter from the drop-down
2. Enter the parameters you want to use in the box that pops up
3. Click Apply
4. To add additional filters, click “Add Filter” and repeat the above steps to add the new restriction

To remove a particular filter you’ve set, click the “x” on the right side of the filter. Campaign status is the only filter that can’t currently be removed, but you’re likely to be using this filter constantly anyway, whether to see enabled items only, paused items only, or both.

The data you’re looking for will appear in the table below the filter, proving that filtering can definitely be a smart way to find information fast.

Saving filters is key to maximizing your efficiency–after all, who wants to set up complicated filters from scratch every time you log into your account? If you want to save a filter, click the “Save” icon located on the right-hand side of the filter bar above the statistics table. 

Name it and your saved filter will appear in the dropdown menu the next time you go to apply a new filter.

Of course, the ability to dive into the weeds makes knowing which filters to choose a little more complicated.

That’s why it’s best to make a list of the metrics that are most important to track your goals before you dive in. Is it seeing ad groups that have a low cost per conversion but high spend? Keywords that have high impressions but few clicks?

A good rule of thumb to follow: look for high cost and low performance.

To help you get started, we’ve listed a few of our favorite filters below.

Without proper management, you could waste a lot of money on Google Ads. Even with tight single keyword ad groups and precise targeting (among other tactics), errant clicks and low-converting ads can still hit your wallet hard and decrease your return on investment (ROI). Use filters to help you identify these leaky buckets and you’ll run a tighter ship than ever. Are you ready for the secret sauce? 

⭐ Filter 1: Cost >= 2 or 3 times your CPA goal or average CPA + Conversions < 1

Alternatively, you can dig deeper and identify wasted spend based on other factors, like your keyword match type, which can give you some interesting insights on how match types affect your performance. For instance, broad keywords may be racking up spend, but giving little back–maybe that’s cause enough to run on phrase and exact match types only.

Recognizing keywords with low Quality Scores is the first step towards improving your overall CTR.  

Breaking the Quality Score rankings into groups of three (1-3 for low, 4-6 for medium, 7-10 for high) is usually enough to do the trick. And remember, the Quality Score filter is only available at the keyword level.

Let’s look at how to filter for Quality Score:

Let’s say we’re running several different campaigns, each with a different bid strategy. For our CPA-driven campaigns, we want to make sure that we’re optimizing for only the best-performing keywords that are below our $10.00 conversion cost.

This filter will show us the keywords that we want to get rid of: those that have low Quality Scores and conversion costs that are higher than our max:

The idea here is to filter for those keywords with low CTRs but high impressions to see what’s performing worst. Or, you can look at keywords with high CTRs, to see what’s doing best.

These filters will identify your worst and top-performing keywords across all ad groups and campaigns.

We’ve been waiting a while for this one. Who knew seeing how you measure up against competitors could be so easy?

The search impression share filter helps you understand how your keywords and ad groups are faring against the competition. It can indicate if you’re ‘owning’ the keyword or if you need to bid more.

You also can filter for impression share specifically lost to rank, which enables you to see what percentage of your eligible impressions you're missing out on because of where your ad falls on search results. From there, you can drill down into attributes that might cause rank issues, like bids or Quality Score.

While this position is based on averages, it’s helpful to see whether a keyword makes the cut-off for a first-page bid.

If you don’t know what search terms trigger your ad to show, optimizing your account is pretty challenging. Filters enable you to easily identify opportunities for excluding irrelevant terms or adding additional keywords that do make sense for your business.

The search term text filter focuses on search terms, helping you analyze your data to see what terms you are and aren’t ranking on. Say the keyword for your eCommerce page is “brown boot”.

Selecting “None” for Added/Excluded means it will only show keywords that aren’t already added or excluded. Based on the search terms that show up, you’ll get clued to whether it’s worth adding negative keywords to avoid wasted clicks, adding new keywords, or setting up new ads to boost performance.

Here’s another thing to filter for in search terms:

In search terms, the keywords column shows what keyword triggered each search term. Once you have the "keyword" column added to search terms, this filter will show all search terms that were brought in by keywords containing certain words or phrases. 

Did you know that Google allows close variants of exact match keywords to trigger your ads? Because of this, you may notice a disparity in CPA or conversions between search terms that exactly match your exact match keyword versus search terms that only closely match. If your CPA is much higher for exact match close variants, you may want to consider engaging in Keyword Tapering.

While the devil is certainly in the keyword details, ad group filters are also powerful, especially when you’re testing many different scenarios.

Some great ad group filter ideas to improve the health of your campaigns:

Impressions and Clicks. An oldie but still a goodie. Just create a filter for groups where you have a certain level of impressions but no clicks, and consider revising ad copy or pausing the ads.

Clicks but No Conversions. Look for these underperforming ad groups and flag them for further investigation, such as message cohesion between landing page and ad text.

Good Engagement. Ad groups where visitors stay on the page longer and with higher click-throughs equal good engagement.

Note that you’ll need to connect your Google Analytics account to your Google Ads Account to use this filter.

Campaign filters are best implemented when you’re managing multiple campaigns.

In those instances, we recommend using filters that revolve around low conversions and high spend. This helps you look for wasted spend (i.e., no conversions) as discussed earlier in the keywords section of this article.

Other campaign-level filters that are helpful:

End Date and Conversions. Identify those campaigns that are over or underperforming before they end.

Invalid Clicks. Campaigns that are generating too many invalid clicks should raise a flag as these can raise your overall cost. While Google monitors for and automatically filters out any invalid clicks they identify, if a certain campaign is generating too many invalid clicks, it could be cause for investigation on your end.

High Bounce Rates. Campaigns with high bounce rates, plus those with high bounce rates and high clicks, likely need adjustments to ad copy or images, or even the CTA itself. (Keep in mind that you’ll need a Google Analytics account that’s connected to your Google Ads account to use this filter.) 

⭐ Filter 26: Bounce rate > 55% + Clicks >= 150

And there are more. Again, choosing what filters you need and at what level will depend on your end goals.

When used right, Google Ads filters are like the perfect hard-working intern who tracks all activity happening within your account. They are especially helpful when working with an external agency because they enable you to see what changes and updates the agency is making to your account, giving you a clear view of their productivity and effectiveness. (If you’re not impressed with your current agency, try Klientboost—we’ll deliver on our promises and then some.)

There are several other filters that help you stay on top of your Google Ads account when it’s managed by an outside team or agency. One of our go-to’s is Change History, which will show you different breakdowns of the activity on your account based on your specified parameters. For example, you could create a custom filter that searches for any changes made by a specified user in your account or in a specific campaign or ad group.

This filter is also a great way to understand the optimization process when you’re not the one doing the optimization, so you can see how much work is (or isn’t) being done. Just keep in mind that you’ll have to navigate to the change history tab to use the filters listed above. 

Google Ads filters enable you to quickly zero in on the data that will help you make smart decisions for any ads—PPC, Google Display Network, YouTube, and more. By using filters that make sense for your business goals, you’ll save time, boost your Google Ads ROI, assess whether your agency deserves your business and more. There’s almost no limit to what you can have at your fingertips as soon as you log into your account. 

Now that you have a better idea of what filters can do to improve your Google Ad campaigns, you can supercharge them with Google Ads extensions. Take a look at our next article for some killer extensions that will take your Google Ads account to the next level.