After 11 years in PPC, I’ve tested many keyword research tools. In that time, PPC has changed so drastically and there are more tools at our fingertips than ever before. Of course I utilize Google Keyword Planner and other third party tools for my research, but you have to think outside the box to learn more about your audience and effectively plan for your campaigns.
I will walk you through some of my favorite (free) tools in 2025 and how these can be used to your advantage.
Google Performance Max Search Categories & Terms
One of my favorite reports is the search terms report that’s available in the Insights section of Performance Max campaigns. The search categories and terms not only show you interesting keyword opportunities but also negative keyword ideas that you might not have considered.
To access this report, head to “Insights and reports” > Insights in the left navigation and scroll to “search terms insights”. Click “view detailed report” and adjust your time range for additional information.
Make sure to expand the carrots for each category to see the search terms that are related to each. Some of the results might surprise you!
Performance Max Search Terms in the Search Terms Report
About a week ago, users reported on LinkedIn that they’re now seeing Pmax search terms within the normal Google Search Terms report. Additionally, it’s possible to add these terms as negative keywords as well!
As of the publication of this post, this isn’t available in all accounts yet, but keep an eye out.
Google Trends
The Search Category report reminds me of another one of my favorite tools: Google Trends. This is one of my favorite ways to see what’s trending in the world. The combination of Google Search trends with Google News and YouTube data can be super interesting. I love the way you can customize the time ranges and locations to see micro and macro trends.
Head to trends.google.com and click Explore to check out search terms or topics for yourself. I ran a search for mobile phones below. You can see the interest over the last year in the United States, followed by a chart that shows the highest interest by metro region and then related topics and related queries.
All of these charts can be customized, and there are endless topics and queries to explore. There are almost certainly new keywords and ideas to be had from poking around on Google Trends!
I love Reddit for research and reading about topics I’m interested in. Reddit is a channel where users are free to truly be themselves, and you can learn a lot.
In 2025, Reddit is the only social platform that has “notable” gains in time spent per day by users in the US:
Type in a few keywords into the Reddit search bar and then browse posts to see what users are talking about. On the desktop version, you will also see a list of Communities that are related to your search. In the screenshot below, you can see that keyword research has its own community, along with r/PPC and r/Google_Ads.
You can also click “Comments” in the navigation bar to see comments across the platform that are related to your search. There is always learning to be had on Reddit!
These are some of my favorite non-traditional ways to find new keyword ideas. What are your favorite ways to do keyword research in 2025?
