Google Ads: EcoGlow’s 2026 Emerging Query Fix

In 2026, a lot of digital marketers managing Google Ads campaigns were facing the same problems. Take Anya Sharma, the Head of Performance Marketing for “EcoGlow,” a DTC brand selling sustainable home goods. EcoGlow’s success was built on well-known product categories like “biodegradable cleaning supplies” and “reusable kitchenware,” and their Google Ads campaigns for those terms had been tuned to perfection, spitting out a consistent ROAS. The problem was, the account had hit a growth ceiling. While the core terms did their job, new product launches, like their “compostable pet waste bags” and “solar-powered garden lights”, were failing to get any real traction, even though broader market research showed people were definitely interested. The real problem was a total disconnect between their great new products and how real people were trying to find them. Anya realized her playbook, which was perfect for mature queries, was completely whiffing on the unpredictable nature of emerging queries. How was she supposed to find customers searching for terms that barely existed a few months ago?

Anya’s first move, like many marketers, was to just add the new product names as exact match keywords into her existing campaigns. This produced almost no impressions and even fewer clicks. The whole problem boiled down to the difference between established search behavior and brand-new interest. For “biodegradable cleaning supplies,” users knew exactly what they wanted and what to type. For “compostable pet waste bags,” the search language was still taking shape. Some people might search “eco dog bags,” while others typed “green pet waste solutions,” or even “dog poop bags that break down.” On their own, these weren’t high-volume terms, but taken together, they represented a significant, completely untapped audience. Ignoring these emerging queries meant leaving money on the table for competitors to scoop up.

I’ve seen it time and again with brands I consult for: just reacting to emerging queries is a recipe for failure. You need a proactive framework. So the first thing I had Anya do was build a dedicated campaign structure. We went into her account and moved all the established, high-performing keywords into their own walled-off campaigns. This freed up budget and, more importantly, prevented the proven winners from eating all the ad spend we needed for discovery. For the new product lines, we launched separate “Discovery” campaigns. Keeping these campaigns separate was absolutely key. If you try to mix new, unproven queries with your established ones, the new terms get starved of impressions because they don’t have the Quality Score history to compete.

Inside these Discovery campaigns, the keyword strategy had to change completely. We moved away from relying so heavily on exact match. We started using phrase match and even some carefully controlled broad match, but with one massive caveat: an aggressively managed negative keyword list. A lot of marketers get this wrong. They just turn on broad match and then watch their budget disappear on garbage searches. The trick is to go broad with a scalpel, not a sledgehammer. Anya’s team, for instance, immediately loaded up her “compostable pet waste bags” campaign with negatives for generic junk like “free,” “cheap,” “DIY,” and all of her competitor’s brand names. That simple step immediately filtered out a ton of irrelevant clicks from people we didn’t want.

The real engine of this strategy is the Search terms report in Google Ads. That report is where the gold is because it shows you exactly what people are typing into Google. Every single week, Anya’s team would pull the report for their Discovery campaigns and hunt for new, relevant search queries that had pulled in impressions or clicks. They might find things like “eco-friendly dog poop bags for small dogs” or “biodegradable waste bags for cats”, terms Anya had never thought of, but that screamed buyer intent.

When a promising new search term popped up a few times or had a surprisingly high click-through rate (CTR), that was our signal. We’d then take that specific query and add it as an exact match keyword into a *different* campaign, which we called “Refined Discovery.” The process works like a funnel. The initial Discovery campaign, with its broad and phrase match keywords, acted as a big net catching all kinds of related searches. The Search terms report then let us pick out the valuable fish from that net, which we moved to a more controlled exact match environment where we could bid on them more aggressively and build a better Quality Score.

One of the hurdles Anya ran into was the predictably low Quality Score on these brand-new exact match keywords. Google’s algorithm needs historical data on expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience to assign a score, and for these terms, there wasn’t any. I told her to get obsessive about ad copy and landing page relevance. For a search like “eco-friendly dog poop bags for small dogs,” the ad couldn’t just say “Compostable Pet Waste Bags.” It had to be “Small Dog Eco-Bags: Biodegradable & Strong.” The landing page then had to speak directly to small dog owners, showing the right product sizes and talking about disposal. Even with low search volume at first, that tight focus on relevance boosted their Quality Scores over time and brought down the cost-per-click (CPC).

Budgeting for these emerging query campaigns has to be handled differently, too. It’s a huge mistake to just throw your main budget at a bunch of untested terms. We had Anya set aside a specific, smaller budget for the Discovery campaigns, around 10-15% of EcoGlow’s total Google Ads spend. This let them experiment without messing with the performance of their core, money-making campaigns. As we found good new exact match keywords and moved them into the Refined Discovery campaigns, we’d slowly feed them more budget based on how they were performing on metrics like conversions and return on ad spend (ROAS).

We also brought in automated bidding, but only when the time was right. For the first few weeks in a Discovery campaign, manual CPC bidding gives you the control you need. It let Anya’s team set low bids on the super-broad stuff and bid up on more specific terms they were spotting in the reports. But once a new exact match keyword proved itself by getting 15-20 conversions in about 30 days, we’d switch it over to an automated strategy like Maximize Conversions with a target CPA. At that point, we could let Google’s algorithm take over, using the conversion data we’d already collected to go find more customers within our cost goals.

Anya’s team also got into the habit of checking Google Ads’ “Insights” page regularly. This new feature, which got a wider rollout in 2025, showed high-level trends and sometimes even suggested emerging search categories based on anonymized user data. It wasn’t a replacement for the detail of the Search terms report, but it did give Anya a 30,000-foot view of market shifts, helping her guess where new queries might pop up next. For instance, the Insights page might show a spike in interest around “sustainable gardening solutions,” which would be a cue for Anya to start exploring terms related to composting or organic pest control, long before EcoGlow even had a product ready.

This disciplined, weekly routine of reviewing search terms, adding new exact match keywords, and constantly refining ad copy and landing pages completely changed EcoGlow’s results. Within six months, the Discovery campaigns that were once just a line item for R&D costs started adding a real, measurable slice to EcoGlow’s total revenue. The “compostable pet waste bags,” which had been dead on arrival, saw a 40% jump in qualified leads that came directly from capturing these search terms we never knew existed. This wasn’t a one-and-done fix. It’s a permanent, cyclical process. The market is always moving, so your Google Ads strategy has to move with it. Being able to spot and jump on how people are searching, even while that language is still forming, is absolutely essential for growth.

If you’re a brand trying to grow your online footprint, you can’t just ignore emerging queries in Google Ads. You need a structured, proactive plan. It takes work, you have to be vigilant, willing to experiment with broader match types (and their risks), and committed to actually digging through your search term data. This process keeps you from getting stuck in a rut and makes sure people can actually find you, no matter how fast search trends change. To make sure your own campaigns are running this way, you should get a thorough paid campaign audit on a regular basis.