Search Term Groups

  • Updated

Search Term Groups allow you to organize your search terms in a way that reflects your business structure, product lines, or strategic priorities. They help segment data across the application, making insights easier to analyze and act on. You can also use Search Term Groups to include additional search terms that are important to your business, ensuring your reporting stays relevant and aligned with your goals.

Navigate to Search Term Groups

To manage your Search Term Groups, click the Settings (⚙️)  icon located in the bottom-left corner of your Adthena account. Under Data Management, expand Google data, then select Search Term Groups.

Search Term Group Table

The Search Term Groups page opens with a table of all your groups. You can filter by domain/location using the selector above the table, search by group name, and sort the list by clicking any column header.

  • Group name: The name of the search term group. Click it to open the group's detail page.
  • Terms: The total number of search terms included in the group.
  • Locations: The number of locations selected for each search term group.
  • Created: The date the group was created.
  • Last updated: The date the group was last modified.
  • Last updated by: The user who made the last change.
  • Health: A score from 0–100, recomputed daily, that reflects the overall quality of the group's terms. See below for details.

Each row also has a pencil icon (rename the group) and a trash icon (delete the group).

You can tick Unused only to show only groups that haven't been used to filter data anywhere in the platform (app filters, API and MCP calls, Arlo, or BI reports) in the last 90 days. Usage doesn't affect a group's health score — this is a separate cleanup filter to help you keep your account focused.

Group Health

Every group is scored from 0–100 based on how many of its terms are duplicates, have quality issues, or too little volume, and how concentrated the group's search volume is across its terms.

  • 🟢 Healthy (70+): Most terms are clean — nothing to clean up right now.
  • 🟠 Average (40–69): Some terms could be cleaned up.
  • 🔴 Unhealthy (below 40): Many terms are duplicates, have quality issues, or are low-volume.
  • ⚪ Unknown: Not assessed yet — checks run periodically.

If a group is tracked across several locations, the Health badge shows its worst-performing location's score, so it never overstates how healthy a group is. Click into a group and use its Health tab to review and clean up flagged terms, or use the Search Term Group Health Check page to review every group at once.

Built-in Special Groups

Alongside groups you create, Adthena maintains built-in special groups, each with its own tab at the top of the Search Term Groups page:

  • Priority: Terms in this group are always included in your Whole Market. You can add terms to it from its tab.
  • Hourly: Terms in this group are tracked hourly. You can add terms to it from its tab.
  • Bing: Terms in this group are available to Bing infringement rules. You can add terms to it from its tab.
  • Ignored: Terms in this group are hidden from analysis. From its tab you can add terms Adthena already tracks for the account — ignoring an untracked term would suppress nothing.
  • Rejected: Terms in this group are rejected from Category Opportunities suggestions. This tab is view and remove only — its terms arrive from other pages.

Create a New Search Term Group

  1. Click the Settings icon in the bottom-left corner of your Adthena account, then navigate to Data Management > Google data > Search Term Groups.
  2. Click + Create group.
  3. In the Create search term group window, enter a Group name.
  4. Under Location(s), search for or tick the locations the group should cover (or use Select all). At least one location is required to continue.
  5. Click Create group.

You'll then be prompted to add terms to your new group — see Adding Terms to a Group below. You can also click Create with Arlo on the main Search Term Groups page to have Adthena's AI assistant build a group for you.

Note: Two kinds of group appear in the list: Standard groups, which you create and manage yourself, and Brand groups, which Adthena manages for you automatically.

Search Term Acceptance & Rejection Rules

✅ Allowed

The following rules describe what is permitted when creating a term:

  • Word Limit: Terms must contain 10 words or fewer.
  • Valid Starting Characters: Terms must begin with a letter, digit, currency symbol, or +.
  • Permitted Symbols: The following characters are allowed within a term:
    • Hyphens (-)
    • Apostrophes (within a term)
    • Ampersands (&)
    • Periods (within the text, but not at the end)
    • Plus signs (+)
    • Accented characters
  • Plus at End: Terms may end with a plus sign (+). Example: "Disney+" → Accepted
  • Periods within Text: Periods are allowed within a term, as long as they are not the final character. Example: "8 ft. ladder" → Accepted

❌ Not Allowed

The following formats or characters will cause a term to be rejected:

  • Word Limit: Terms containing more than 10 words are not allowed.
  • Invalid Starting Characters: Terms beginning with -, /, _, or ' will be rejected.
  • Blocked Symbols: Colons (:), parentheses (), commas (,), question marks (?), pipes (|), at signs (@), percent signs (%), and emojis will cause rejection.
  • Period at End: A term cannot end with a period. Example: "8 ft." → Rejected

Any term that fails these checks is flagged at the review step when you add terms to a group (see below), so you can see exactly why before anything is added.

The Group Detail Page

Click a group's name from the Search Term Groups table to open its detail page. This is where you manage everything about that group other than its name.

At the top, five summary cards show:

  • Terms – total term count, with an active/inactive breakdown
  • Hourly Terms – how many of the group's terms are also tracked hourly
  • Locations – how many locations the group covers
  • Health – the group's current health score
  • Last updated – when the group last changed

Below the summary cards, three tabs filter the term list: Active Terms, Inactive Terms, and All Terms. Two further tabs, Health and Locations, let you review flagged terms or manage which locations the group applies to.

The term table shows:

  • Term: The search term itself.
  • Is hourly term?: Shows a tick if we also check this term every hour.
  • Status: Active, Outside of cap, Researching, or Inactive (see below).
  • Reason: Why an inactive term is not being tracked. Hover the Reason value for more detail. Shows "--" for active terms.
  • Remove: Removes the term from this group.

You can tick terms and use Remove all to bulk-remove them, or click + Add new terms to add more.

The Health Tab

Click a group's Health tab to see its cleanup recommendations. It shows:

  • The group's health score (0–100) and band (Healthy/Average/Unhealthy), with a one-line summary of the main issue (e.g. "This group has near-duplicate terms worth removing"). Health is recalculated daily, and the tab shows when it was last assessed.
  • A Cleanup recommendations section split into two columns: Keeping, listing terms that will stay in the group, and Removing, listing terms flagged for removal, each with its search volume shown alongside.
  • A filter badge (e.g. near-duplicate, grammatical error etc) showing which issue type is currently flagged, with a count.
  • A Remove [n] terms button to action the recommended cleanup in one click.

Term Status

Status reflects your selected locations — a term is Active when it qualifies in at least one of them:

  • Active – Reported in at least one of your selected locations.
  • Outside of cap – Qualifies, but sits above your plan's tracked-term cap.
  • Researching – Adthena is still assessing it — newly added terms sit here for a few days.
  • Inactive – Not reported right now — e.g. low volume, not relevant, or a quality issue.

Adding Terms to a Group

Click + Add new terms on the group detail page (or add terms right after creating a group) to open the Add terms to group window.

  1. Enter terms – Choose how you want to add terms:

    • Add manually: Type or paste a list of terms into the Terms box, one per line or comma-separated. Duplicates and blanks are dropped automatically.
    • Choose existing: Select from terms already tracked for the account.
    • Upload CSV: Import a list of terms from a CSV file.

    Click Check and add terms to continue.

  1. Review – Adthena checks each term against the acceptance rules and shows the result:

    • 🟢 Good – the term passes and will be added.
    • 🟠 Ignore – the term can't be added (for example, it fails a rejection rule).

    Nothing is added until you confirm. You can go Back to change your list, optionally choose to Review search volume first (this takes a little longer), or click Add [n] terms to finish.

  1. Search volume (optional) – An additional step to review search volume for your terms before confirming, if you chose that option at the review step.

Rename a Search Term Group

The pencil icon on a group's row only renames the group — it doesn't open term or location editing.

  1. Click the pencil icon next to the group you want to rename.
  2. In the Rename group window, update the Group name.
  3. Click Save changes.

To change a group's terms or locations, open the group by clicking its name — see The Group Detail Page above.

Note: Group Type (Standard or Brand) is set when the group is created and can't be changed afterward. 

Tracking Changes & Activity Log

The Last updated and Last updated by columns on the main table show the most recent edit date and who made it, so you can quickly spot groups that may need attention.

For a full history, use the Activity log tab at the top of the Search Term Groups page. It records every change to your groups — Added term, Removed term, Created group, Deleted group, and Renamed group — showing who made the change and when. A bulk change rolls up into a single entry that you can expand to see the full list of terms affected. You can filter the log by action, user, or date to find a specific change.

Delete a Search Term Group

  1. While in Search Term Groups, click the trash icon next to the group you'd like to delete.
  2. A confirmation window appears: Delete "[group name]"? — "This permanently deletes the group, along with its terms and locations. This can't be undone."
  3. Click Delete group to confirm, or Cancel to back out.

Important: Deleting a group is permanent and removes the group's terms and locations with it. This can't be undone.