Free tool
Keyword Grouping Tool: Build Ad Groups From a List
Paste a keyword list and the tool sorts it into ad groups by the words the keywords share, names each group, and hands you the result as text or as a CSV for Google Ads Editor. It runs in your browser, so your list never leaves the page. Start with the plumbing example below or paste your own.
Keyword grouping tool
Group Your Keywords Into Ad Groups
One keyword per line. The groups update as you type. The form opens with twelve plumbing keywords you can replace with your own list.
Want us to check how your account is structured, and where it leaks budget?
Why group at all
Why Ad Groups Should Share One Intent
An ad group is the unit Google uses to match a search to an ad and a landing page. Every keyword in it shares the same ads, so a group that mixes water heater repair with drain cleaning shows one of those searches an ad about the other: a headline that does not match, fewer clicks, and a page that does not answer. A group built around one intent fixes all three at once. The headline repeats the search, the final URL is the water heater page, and the ad text promises what that page delivers.
Quality Score is where this shows up in numbers. Google rates expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience for each keyword, and all three improve when the keyword, the ad and the page say the same thing. Our Quality Score guide walks through the three components and what moves each one. A tight ad group is the cheapest way to raise all three, because you change the structure once instead of rewriting ads keyword by keyword.
The opposite failure is also common: hundreds of single-keyword ad groups that each get too few clicks to learn from and take hours to maintain. We aim for 5 to 20 keywords per group, all happy with the same headline. Structure is the first thing we rebuild in Google Ads management accounts, and the first thing a free audit looks at.
Group
Paste the list, keep word mode, and read the groups and their counts.
MinutesCheck
Merge groups that mean the same thing, split any that mix two intents, place the Other keywords.
Same sittingBuild
One ad group per block, a headline that repeats the group name, a landing page about that service.
Before launch
Under the hood
How the Tool Groups Keywords, and Where It Stops
The tool measures word overlap, not meaning. It gets the first draft right in seconds; a person signs off on the groups before they become ad groups.
The tool reads each keyword as a list of words, drops the ones in the ignore list, and looks for the word (or, in phrase mode, the two-word phrase) that the most keywords have in common. Each candidate is scored by how many keywords contain it and by how much else those keywords share. That second part matters: repair appears in four example keywords, but water heater repair and slab leak repair have nothing else in common, so water, whose three keywords also share heater, scores higher and forms the first group. The winners leave the pool, the search repeats on the rest, and groups smaller than your minimum go to Other.
Group names are the shared word, widened to the longest run of words every member shares, so the example says water heater rather than water. Phrase mode needs two content words in a row, so plumber near me (near and me are ignored) lands in Other; use it on product lists where single words such as black or large would pull unrelated items together.
- Word overlap, not meaning. The tool does not know that plumber and plumbing are the same trade, or that tankless is a type of water heater. Move plumbing company into the plumber group yourself.
- No intent labels. It cannot tell water heater repair cost (research) from water heater repair near me (hire now). Split those by hand.
- The ignore list is yours. If every keyword in your list contains repair, add repair to the ignore list and let the nouns do the grouping.
- A person checks the result. Read every group before you build it. Merging two groups takes seconds; running ads on a wrong one costs a week of budget.
Building the account
Turning Groups Into Campaigns and Ad Groups
The output is a structure, not a finished account. Campaigns hold the budget and settings, each block becomes an ad group, and Other gets sorted by hand.
One campaign per budget or goal
Campaigns hold the budget, locations, schedule and bidding strategy. Groups that deserve their own budget get their own campaign: emergency plumbing on a 24 hour schedule with a higher target, installation on a tighter one. Groups that share those settings can share a campaign.
One ad group per block
Each block in the output becomes an ad group named after its label. Write the headline that repeats the label (Water Heater Repair and Installation), point the final URL at the page about that service, and start the keywords in phrase and exact match. Check that the headline fits in 30 characters with the Google Ads preview tool.
What to do with Other
Other holds the keywords that share nothing with the rest. Three choices: merge each into the closest group by hand (plumbing company belongs with plumber), give a valuable loner its own ad group, or drop it. A loner that is a question or a job search usually becomes a negative keyword instead.
Keep the groups apart
Pair the Groups With Match Types and Negatives
Match types decide how far a search can stray from the keyword; the group decides which ad it sees. Start every new group in phrase and exact match, which the keyword match type tool wraps in one paste, and add broad match only once the group has conversion data for Smart Bidding. Our match types guide covers the close variant rules.
Negatives keep the groups from competing. If water heater and drain are separate ad groups, add drain as a negative to the water heater group and water heater as a negative to the drain group, so a search for water heater drain valve does not enter both auctions. Campaign-level negatives then handle the junk: jobs, free, DIY, training. The negative keywords guide has starter lists by business type.
Grouping is done once; searches change every week. Read the search terms report, move converting searches into exact match inside their group, and move the strays into negatives.
Water heater group: -drain, -leak. Drain group: -"water heater", -leak. Leak group: -drain, -"water heater". Each group now owns its searches, so the headline always matches.
Mistakes we fix most often
Four Grouping Mistakes That Waste Budget
All four are structure problems, so the fix is a rebuild, not a bid change.
Grouping by price, not intent
Every low-CPC keyword in one group because the bids look similar. The ads then match none of the searches. Group by what the person wants; set the bids at the campaign level.
Launching the Other group
Other is a holding pen, not an ad group. Anything still in it when you build gets a generic ad and a generic page, which is the problem you came here to fix.
Trusting a modifier group
A group named repair or cost with eight unrelated services in it is a signal to add that word to the ignore list and run the tool again, not a group to build.
One intent, two groups
Plumber and plumbing company in separate groups split the clicks and the learning. When the headline and page would be the same, merge them.
Questions
Keyword Grouping Questions
Does the keyword grouping tool store my keywords?
No. The tool runs in your browser. Your keyword list is never sent to us or anyone else, and nothing is saved when you leave the page.
What is the difference between word mode and phrase mode?
Word mode groups keywords that share one word and scores each word by how much else its keywords have in common, so a modifier like repair does not swallow unrelated services. Phrase mode only groups keywords that share two words in a row, which keeps unrelated products apart but sends more keywords to Other.
Why did a keyword end up in the Other group?
It shares no non-ignored word with enough other keywords to reach your minimum group size, or, in phrase mode, it has fewer than two content words. Lower the minimum, switch to word mode, or move it into the closest group by hand.
Is keyword clustering the same as keyword grouping?
For Google Ads, yes. Both mean sorting keywords into sets that share one intent so each set can have its own ad group, ads and landing page. SEO tools cluster by shared search results; this tool clusters by shared words, which is what ad groups need.
How many keywords should an ad group have?
We aim for 5 to 20 keywords that would all be served well by the same headline and landing page. Fewer is fine for a high-value term that deserves its own ad. More usually means two intents are mixed and the group should be split.
Can I use the output in Google Ads Editor?
Yes. Download the CSV, open it in a spreadsheet, add a campaign column and a match type column, and paste the rows into the Keywords view in Google Ads Editor. The text output pastes straight into the Google Ads keyword box one ad group at a time.
How many keywords can I paste at once?
There is no fixed limit. Lists of a few thousand keywords group in a moment in a current browser. Lists are easier to review in batches of a few hundred, one campaign at a time, which is also how you will build them.
Free audit
Groups Built? See Where the Budget Goes Next
We review your account with view-only access and tell you whether we found what holds it back: structure, match types, negatives or tracking. No obligation.