How to Find Search Terms in Google Analytics

Want to know the exact words people type into Google to find your website? This information is pure gold for refining your SEO, creating better content, and understanding your audience's intent. This guide will show you precisely how to find those valuable search terms in both Google Analytics 4 and Universal Analytics, and how to get around the dreaded "(not provided)" mystery.

Why Is Finding Your Search Terms So Important?

Diving into your search query data isn’t just about satisfying curiosity. It’s about making smarter, data-backed decisions. Here’s what you gain:

• Understand User Intent: You get to see the actual language your audience uses. Are they asking questions ("how to file quarterly taxes") or looking for products ("best small business accounting software")? This gives you a direct look into their needs and pain points.
• Improve Content Strategy: Discover what topics are resonating and identify content gaps. If people are landing on your site with terms you don't directly address, that's a perfect opportunity to create a new blog post or landing page specifically for that query.
• Optimize Existing Pages: See which specific keywords drive traffic to certain pages. You can then double down on those terms, optimizing your title tags, meta descriptions, and page content to improve your rankings and click-through rates.
• Uncover New Keyword Opportunities: You’ll likely find long-tail keyword variations you hadn't thought of. These are often less competitive and highly specific, bringing in qualified traffic that's more likely to convert.

The Problem: Whatever Happened to the Keywords Report?

If you've been using Google Analytics for a while, you might remember a time when finding organic keywords was simple. You’d check your reports and see a neat list of every search term that brought visitors to your site.

Then, around 2011, a new entry began to dominate that list: (not provided).

This happened because Google switched to secure search (https) to protect user privacy. When someone is logged into a Google account and searches, the search term is encrypted. As a result, Google Analytics can no longer see that data, replacing it with the vague "(not provided)" label.

By the time Universal Analytics was fully mature, this often accounted for over 99% of your organic keyword data, making the report almost useless. Thankfully, Google offered a better way forward by letting you see this data through another one of its free tools: Google Search Console.

The Solution: Connect Google Search Console to Google Analytics

Google Search Console (GSC) is a free service that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. Crucially, it tracks your performance before a user clicks. It knows the impressions, clicks, average positions, and — you guessed it — the search queries that led people to your site.

By connecting GSC to Google Analytics, you can pull this invaluable pre-click query data directly into your GA interface, where you can analyze it alongside your post-click behavioral data (like bounce rate, time on page, and conversions).

How to Link Search Console to Google Analytics 4

If you're using GA4, connecting to GSC is straightforward. This is the only way to get search query data into your GA4 property, so it's a critical first step.

1. Navigate to the Admin section of your GA4 property (the gear icon in the bottom-left).
2. In the Property column, scroll down to the Product Links section and click on Search Console Links.
3. In the top-right corner, click the blue Link button.
4. Click Choose accounts. If you are a verified owner of a GSC property, it will appear here. Select the checkbox for the account you wish to link and click Confirm.
5. Click Next. Now, you’ll need to associate this connection with your site’s web data stream. Select your web stream (most properties only have one).
6. Click Next, review your settings, and then hit Submit.

And that's it! The link is created. It can take up to 48 hours for data to start populating in your reports, so be patient.

How to Link Search Console to Universal Analytics (UA)

Since Universal Analytics stopped processing new data in July 2023, this is only useful for analyzing your historical data. You cannot link a new property, but you can check your existing integrations.

1. Go to the Admin section of your Universal Analytics property.
2. In the Property column, click on Property Settings.
3. Scroll down until you see the Search Console section.
4. Here, you can see if a property is already linked or click Adjust Search Console to edit settings.

Once linked, your UA property would pull in GSC data for analysis, which was the standard way to find search queries for years.

Finding Search Terms in Google Analytics 4

After linking Search Console, the query data won’t appear in your standard reports by default. You have to add the Search Console report collection to your reporting library first. It takes less than a minute.

Step 1: Publish the Search Console Reports Collection

1. In the left-hand navigation, click on Reports.
2. At the very bottom of the reporting navigation, click Library.
3. You'll see a section called Collections. Find the card named Search Console and click the three vertical dots on it.
4. From the dropdown menu, select Publish.

That's all you need to do. A new "Search Console" section will instantly appear in your main Reports navigation on the left.

Step 2: View the GA4 Queries Report

Now that the dedicated report is available, finding your search terms is simple:

1. Go back to your main Reports view.
2. In the left-hand navigation, you will now see a Search Console dropdown menu. Click it.
3. Two reports will appear: Queries and Google Organic Search Traffic (a landing page report).
4. Click on Queries.

You are now looking at a report that shows every Google organic search query that your website appeared for. This report pulls data directly from GSC and shows you:

• Google Organic Search Query: The actual term someone typed into Google.
• Organic Google Search Clicks: How many times people clicked your site from that query.
• Organic Google Search Impressions: How many times your site appeared in search results for that query.
• Organic Google Search Click-Through Rate: The percentage of impressions that resulted in a click (Clicks / Impressions).
• Organic Google Search Average Position: Your average ranking in Google's search results for that query.

Finding Your Search Terms in Universal Analytics (for Historical Analysis)

If you need to analyze data from before July 2023, you can do so in your Universal Analytics property, provided you had Search Console connected.

Here's how to access the historical query reports:

1. Log in to your Universal Analytics account.
2. In the left-hand navigation, go to Acquisition > Search Console.
3. This will open up four different reports:

This report is the go-to place for all historical organic keyword research within the Google Analytics ecosystem.

What About Paid Search Terms?

Finding the search queries from your Google Ads campaigns is a bit different but just as important for optimizing your ad spend. Instead of linking Search Console, you need to link your Google Ads account to GA4.

Once linked, you can find the actual user search terms that triggered your ads.

1. Go to Reports > Acquisition > Acquisition overview.
2. Find the card titled Sessions by Session Google Ads campaign and click View Google Ads campaigns.
3. This report shows you performance by Campaign. To see the search queries, click the small blue + icon next to "Session Google Ads campaign" to add a secondary dimension.
4. In the search box, type "query" and select Google Ads search query.

Now the report will show you every unique search term that triggered one of your ads, along with key performance data. This is massive for identifying negative keywords (terms you want to stop spending money on) and discovering new high-performing keywords to add to your campaigns.

Final Thoughts

Uncovering the exact terms your audience uses to find you is essential for any modern SEO or content marketing strategy. While Google Analytics doesn’t offer this data out of the box anymore, connecting it with Google Search Console gives you the full picture, letting you see the queries that drive impressions, clicks, and traffic all in one place.

Pulling these insights still requires a bit of platform-hopping and report configuration. At Graphed, we simplify this entirely. Once you connect your data sources like Google Analytics and Google Search Console, you don’t need to hunt for the right report or add custom dimensions. We let you ask questions in plain English, like "Show me a list of my top 10 search queries from last quarter that led to conversions" and instantly get an answer. It lets you focus on analysis, not just data pulling. Check out how you can build real-time marketing dashboards with Graphed and start getting insights in seconds.