Search term

In everyday language, search term and keyword are used interchangeably. For your store, it pays to keep them apart, because they are two perspectives: the search term belongs to the customer, the keyword belongs to you.

Search term and keyword: two sides of the same search

A keyword is the term you align a page or an ad with, for example “women’s running shoes”. Search terms are everything people actually type in for it: “running shoes women”, “running shoes for women wide feet”, “runing shoes women sale” or “which running shoe for knee pain women”. A keyword therefore stands for a whole family of search terms.

Google understands this family well today. Variants, synonyms and typos are grouped together, and the search engine recognises the intent behind the words. That is why the page that repeats a word most often does not win. The page that best serves the intent behind the search term wins.

Behind every search term there is an intent

• Learning: “how often to replace running shoes”. The person wants to learn, not buy yet. A guide or an encyclopedia entry fits.

• Comparing: “women’s running shoes test” or “asics or brooks”. The buying decision is maturing. Buying advice, comparisons and reviews fit.

• Buying: “brooks ghost 16 women size 8 order”. Now the product page with price, availability and delivery time counts.

• Navigating: “store name returns”. The customer is looking for a specific page at a specific company.

If you send a buying search term to a guide or an informational question to a product page, you lose the visitor. The right landing page therefore always starts with the intent, not with the word.

Short head and long tail

Short search terms such as “running shoes” have high search volume, a lot of competition and unclear intent. Long, specific search terms such as “waterproof trail shoes women narrow feet” are searched less often, but they are precise and close to purchase. Taken together, these long search terms make up a large share of all search queries. For most online stores, that is where the easier and more profitable path to revenue lies, especially in categories with large competitors. What this looks like in practice is shown on SEO for online stores.

Search terms in Google Ads: where budget quietly drains away

In Google Ads you book keywords, but you pay for clicks on search terms. Depending on the keyword match type, Google also shows your ad for related searches. The keyword “running shoes” then turns into clicks on “running shoes repair”, “buy used running shoes” or a competitor’s “running shoes voucher”.

The search terms report shows which actual searches you paid for. Checking it regularly and adding unsuitable terms as negative keywords is one of the simplest ways to save budget. At the same time, you will find search terms there that sell and do not yet have their own keyword. More on this on the page about Google Ads for Shopware and Shopify.

Where to find your customers’ search terms

• Google Search Console: It shows which search terms your store appears for in the organic results, how often it is clicked and in which position it ranks.

• Search terms report in Google Ads: It shows the paid searches, including revenue per search term, provided the tracking is right.

• The search in your own store: the most underestimated source. Here customers describe in their own words what they are looking for in your store. Searches without results are especially valuable, because each one is a customer who wanted to buy and found nothing.

• Keyword research: Keyword research shows search volume and variants, including terms you are not yet visible for.

• Customer service and sales: The questions on the phone and in emails are tomorrow’s search terms.

From search term to question: searching in AI assistants

In ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Perplexity, people do not type keywords but whole questions: “I run three times a week, have wide feet and knee problems. Which running shoe suits me?” A search term becomes a conversation with context. If you want to be recommended there, you need content that answers such questions concretely and product data that an AI can read unambiguously. That is the core of Generative Engine Optimization.

Searching more precisely with Google search operators

Search operators turn Google Search into an analysis tool, for your own website as well as for looking at competitors.

• “Exact phrase”: Finds exactly this phrase, for example to track down copied product descriptions on the web.

• site: Shows results from one domain only, e.g. site:your-store.com. Good for a rough look at which pages Google knows.

• Minus (-): Excludes terms, e.g. running shoes -kids.

• Asterisk (*): Placeholder for unknown words within a phrase.

• filetype: Searches for file types, e.g. filetype:pdf for data sheets or catalogues.

• intitle: Finds pages with a specific term in the page title.

• before: and after: Limit results to a period, e.g. after:2026-01-01.

• OR: Combines alternatives, e.g. running shoes OR jogging shoes.

An example of combining them: site:your-store.com intitle:sale shows which sale pages Google knows from your store. For reliable figures, the Search Console remains the better source, because the result counts in Google Search are only estimates.

Keywords are your assumption about how customers search. Search terms are the answer. If you regularly read what customers really type in, you sell with your customers’ words, not with your own.