How to choose keywords for a Google Ads campaign
Good keyword research solves half the problem before a campaign even launches — bad research can't be rescued by bids or creative afterward.
Start from intent, not from the product
The first step isn't listing product and service names — it's sorting queries by decision stage: someone searching 'buy', someone searching 'compare', someone searching 'reviews'. For a limited budget, commercial intent always takes priority.
The Google Ads Keyword Planner set to the Uzbekistan region is the baseline tool for estimating volume and competition, but it doesn't surface the narrow local phrasing people actually use in speech.
Supplement the planner with observation: check autosuggest in Google's own search box as you type the first words of a query, and study the 'related searches' box — phrasing missing from the standard report often shows up there.
Bilingual keywords for the local market
Build keyword sets separately in Russian and in Uzbek — these aren't translated variants of the same query but effectively two different sets with different volume and competition.
For Uzbek, treat both spellings — Latin and Cyrillic — as separate keywords: users type both 'shifoxona' and 'шифохона', and volume for each spelling can differ noticeably by region.
Mixed queries pairing a Russian or Uzbek word with an English brand or technology term are a growing category, especially in IT and electronics, and deserve their own list.
Match types and when to use which
Exact match gives maximum control but minimum reach — use it for proven, highly convertible phrases where the cost of error is high. Phrase match is the middle ground for a campaign's core.
Broad match is useful for discovering new phrasing via the search terms report, but demands daily negative-keyword control in the first weeks or reach drifts quickly into irrelevant territory.
Don't mix all three types on the same words in one ad group without a bid priority structure — otherwise the system shows whichever match is cheapest for it, not whichever is best for you.
Prioritising: where to start the launch
For a new account, start with 20-30 keywords with the clearest commercial intent rather than a full list of several hundred phrases. A narrow start yields quick statistics; a broad one spreads budget without conclusions.
Include brand queries in a separate campaign from day one — they're the cheapest and best-converting, yet often forgotten at launch because they feel too obvious to bother with.
Weigh cost per click from the planner alongside search volume — sometimes a lower-volume, low-competition phrase yields more conversions per budget than a popular, highly contested query.
Regular list review
Keywords aren't a static list assembled once at launch. Review the keyword performance report monthly and pause anything spending budget with zero conversions over a reasonable period.
Seasonality affects phrasing relevance more than it appears: queries about air conditioners or heating change volume by multiples between seasons, and the list deserves seasonal review rather than staying fixed year-round.
Keep adding new keywords from the search terms report continuously — competitors and the market phrase queries in new ways, and a list frozen at launch grows stale faster than expected.