Search Lift measurement determines how your ads impact a personâs likelihood to search for your product or brand on YouTube and Google Search. You can use this measurement to adjust and improve your campaigns to achieve your desired marketing objectives.
In this article, youâll learn how to set up Search Lift measurement, define your search terms of interest, and view your Search Lift measurement data.
On this page
Before you begin
A Search Lift study can be run on its own or together with a Brand Lift and/or Conversion Lift study. For example, you can run a study with both Brand Lift and Search Lift, or decide to run Search Lift only.
Search Lift budgeting
To detect the lift driven by eligible campaigns, you need to meet some minimum budget requirements. This budget ensures that your campaigns get enough impressions and search volume to have a reasonable chance of detecting lift. Itâs highly recommended that the sum of the budgets of all active campaigns that are measuring the product or the brand should meet the minimum budget requirements shared in About Search Lift budget recommendations.
Example
In the US, a minimum of $10,000 USD is needed for Brand Lift, and the budget requirement for Search Lift is, therefore, also $10,000 USD. To measure Brand and Search Lift together, the minimum spend is still $10,000 USD, and not $20,000 USD, because budgets arenât additive.
Search Lift search terms
A key part of running a successful Search Lift study is ensuring you follow our best practices in selecting good search terms. Note that when running Search Lift together with Brand Lift, the name of the product or brand being advertised and selected as the preferred Brand Lift survey answer is always included in your Search Lift study.
When setting up your Search Lift study, youâll be asked to create search term groups. A group is a collection of related search terms to be measured in your Search Lift study. You can have up to 5 groups, but typically only 1-2 groups are needed. Within each group, you should ensure that search terms are relevant and specifically related to your product or brand and to your ad. We often find that Search Lift measurement is more successful if you focus on a few search terms that are specific and feature your brand or product names.
Using specific search terms that are carefully chosen is key, because itâs easier to detect lift for search terms that people are unlikely to search for without the ad, but likely to search for after viewing the ad. Indeed, those search terms will have a high increase in search activity relative to their baseline, making the lift easier to identify reliably.
- Select a small number of search terms. 1-5 recommended per search term group.
- Select only terms associated with your brand or product or relevant to your ad.
- Select search terms that are specific and for which you expect to have a high search volume uplift thanks to your ad campaigns.
- Do NOT select a large number of search terms or create too many groups.
- Do NOT select generic or irrelevant search terms.
- Do NOT select competitor search terms.
- Do NOT use a sentence or a search term composed of too many words as itâs unlikely that users will search exactly for the same sentence.
- Thereâs no need to include multiple variations of the same word including misspelling, punctuation, accents or the like as these will already be captured.
Example
Advertising for the Google Pixel 7 Pro
âPixel 7 Proâ is a search term that is specific, and which is unlikely to be searched for without the ad. Note that using âpixel 7 proâ will include searches like âGoogle pixel 7 proâ and ânew pixel 7 pro smartphoneâ. So, this term is specific but catches a wide range of queries and is a good candidate.
âGoogle Pixelâ is a search term thatâs only partly related to your ad. Some users will be searching for the âGoogle Pixel 6â or any other model, which will make it harder to detect a significant lift. Using such a search term is possible, but if you donât notice lift, you should understand that it could be because the term wasnât specific enough.
âGoogleâ or âPixelâ are search terms that are too common and for which people will be searching regardless of your advertising. People search for âGoogleâ for various information unrelated to the pixel phone, and people search for âpixelâ which is a very common term in photography. Itâll be very hard to detect any lift with those search terms, even with a high performing ad.
âImproved Pixel 7 camera zoomâ is too complex and contains too many words. Itâs unlikely that enough users search for this exact sentence to detect lift. It would be better to break up this complex search term into 2 simpler search terms instead: âPixel 7 cameraâ and âPixel zoomâ.
Steps to create a Search Lift study
Create and define your product or brand
- Go to Experiments within the Campaigns menu
.
- Select the Lift studies tab and select Create a study.
- In the âCreate your lift studyâ page, check the box next to Search lift, then select Continue.
- In the âLift study nameâ card, enter a lift study name.
- In the âSelect the campaigns you want to measure in your lift studyâ section, check the box next to the campaigns that you want to measure.
- Note: If you choose Demand Gen campaigns, ensure that they are running ads on channels that support Search lift.
- In the campaign selection table, you can select Add filter to filter eligible campaigns based on:
- Campaign name
- Campaign status
- Campaign type
- In the âCreate a search lift studyâ section, enter a name for your Search lift study in the âStudy nameâ card.
- In the âSearch term groupâ card, enter relevant search terms.
- Select Add another group if you want to add a new Search term group.
- Note: You can add a maximum of 5 Search term groups. Ensure that each search term group contains 1-3 relevant search terms. To delete a search term, select the cross mark next to it.
-
When done, select Create study.
View your Search Lift measurement data
Search Lift measurement data is only available in the lift measurement page. You can have an overview of your results in the "Lift Measurement" table.- Go to Experiments within the Campaigns menu
and select the Lift studies tab.
- In the "Lift Measurement" table, select the Columns icon
, then select Modify columns.
- Select Search Lift, then select Apply.
To view your detailed results, open your study details and visit the âSearch Liftâ tab.
