Google Ads Labels: Organizing Campaigns, Ads and Keywords

This guide uses Google Ads Help: About ads labels and Create, use, and manage labels, plus Google's developer docs and the other pages linked in each section. Checked on 8 November 2026.

What labels are for

Google describes labels as a way to "organize the elements in your account into meaningful groups so you can quickly and easily filter and report on the data that is of most interest to you." You can apply them to campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords. A label is just a name, a colour and an optional description; it changes nothing about how ads serve. Its value is that it cuts across your account structure.

Google's own example is a retailer with the same shoe, clothing and bag campaigns repeated for three states. Without labels there is no quick way to compare sneaker keywords in New York with sneaker keywords in Massachusetts. With a "sneakers" label on every sneaker keyword, one filter shows them all together.

Google's Google Ads API labels guide adds more typical uses:

• Campaigns you run only at certain times of year, which you want to include in or leave out of reports.
• A new set of keywords in an ad group that you want to compare with the older ones.
• Several people working in one account, each managing a subset of campaigns.
• Marking the status of items, for example "to review" or "approved by client".

Labels sit next to your naming conventions rather than replacing them. A campaign name can hold only one structure; labels let the same campaign belong to "Brand", "Q4 promo" and "Owner: Sam" at once. If your account structure itself needs work, start with our Google Ads basics guide.

Labels are not inherited

This is the rule that catches people out. In Google's words, "labels aren't inherited down throughout the campaign." A label on a campaign applies to that campaign only, not to its ad groups, ads or keywords. If you want the label at the lower levels too, you have to apply it there as well.

Google shows what that means for the numbers. In its example, a campaign label "Favorite" is credited with all 18 clicks of that campaign's keywords. At ad group level the same label gets only 4 clicks, because just one ad group carries it, and the unlabelled ad groups show up as "Everything Else". At keyword level a keyword that has two labels is counted in both rows, so, as Google notes, the rows are unlikely to add up to your total clicks. Check which level a label lives on before you compare totals.

Creating and applying a label

Google's steps in the current interface:

1. Click the Campaigns icon. For campaigns, ad groups or ads, open the Campaigns drop-down in the section menu. For keywords, open Audiences, keywords, and content, then Search keywords.
2. Tick the box next to the items you want to label. You can tick several at once.
3. Click the Label drop-down in the blue banner above the table.
4. To make a new label, click New label, enter a name, choose a colour, add a description if you like, click Create, then Apply.
5. To use labels you already have, select them and click Apply.

Manager account (MCC) users can create, edit and apply labels for specific client accounts or across all campaigns, and Google says labels can be created and managed "anywhere along the path of a manager account to a child account level."

If you work offline in Google Ads Editor, labels travel in CSV files too: Editor's CSV file columns list includes Label, Labels [Campaign labels] and Labels [Ad group labels]. Our Google Ads Editor guide covers importing and posting changes.

Filtering by label

On the same pages, click the filter icon in the upper right of the table, choose Label and pick one or more labels, then click Apply. By default the table shows items that have any of the selected labels; Google says you can switch this to items that have all of them or none of them. The "none" option is handy for finding items nobody has labelled yet.

Editing, removing and deleting

• Remove a label from an item: select the item, open the Label drop-down and untick the label.
• Edit a label: find an item that carries it (labels appear in the "Label" column), hover over the label, click the pencil icon, change the name, colour or description, and click Save. Labels are, as Google puts it, customizable "at any time".
• Delete a label: same route, but click the trash icon and confirm with Remove.

Renaming is safer than deleting and recreating when scripts or rules use the label, but note that scripts which match on the label's name will stop matching after a rename (see below).

Labels in reports

Google's About page still describes a "Dimensions" tab labels report, but it says that report belongs to the "previous AdWords experience". In the current interface the practical route is the label filter on campaign, ad group, ad and keyword tables, plus the Label column. Google's labels pages point to segments in your tables for further breakdowns.

For automated reporting, the API's labels guide says the campaign and ad group report views include a labels field, and that separate label resources (campaign label, ad group label, ad group ad label, ad group criterion label and customer label) let you list which items carry which label. If your reports come together in Looker Studio or another tool, our website analytics reporting guide covers the wider setup.

Labels with automated rules

Automated rules can apply labels for you. Google's common uses page describes a rule "to help create meaningful label groupings of managed accounts, campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ads": open the Accounts, Campaigns, Ad groups, Keywords or Ads page, click the 3-dot icon, choose Create an automated rule, select Change labels as the action, choose what to apply it to, set conditions and frequency, then click Preview before you save.

For example, a weekly rule that labels keywords meeting a cost or conversion condition, so you can review them in one filtered list before deciding anything. Our automated rules guide covers timing, undo and safety tips.

Labels in scripts and the API

Google's Google Ads scripts labels page says scripts support labels at account, campaign, ad group, ad and keyword level, and that in a manager account labels can group similar client accounts. Its use cases show why labels and scripts work well together:

• Process a list of entities: label weekend-only keywords, then let a script enable them on Friday evening and pause them on Monday morning.
• Work across several runs: a script that cannot finish within the 30-minute limit can label what it has already processed, run hourly, and skip anything labelled.
• Two-step changes: the script only labels keywords it would change; you review them in the interface and make the change in bulk yourself.
• Keep a history: a label records that a bid was already raised, so the next run behaves differently.
• Agencies: label all accounts of one kind in a manager account and have a script act on just those accounts.

Two details from the docs matter in practice. Filtering by LabelNames is a convenience that needs an extra lookup; Google suggests filtering by the label's resource name (customers/[customer id]/labels/[label id]) with CONTAINS_ALL, CONTAINS_ANY or CONTAINS_NONE when you already have the label object. And the AdsApp.Label reference says label.campaigns() returns "search and display campaigns" only, so do not assume it reaches every campaign type. See our Google Ads scripts guide for setup, preview and limits.

Limits Google lists

Google's Help pages do not give label limits, but the Google Ads API system limits page does:

Small and medium accounts rarely get near these. The one to watch is the 100,000 account-wide figure if a script labels keywords automatically and never cleans up.

Not the same as Merchant Center custom labels

Shopping advertisers also meet "custom labels", which are something else. Custom label 0 to 4 are product attributes in your Merchant Center data, used to group products for reporting and bidding in Performance Max, Shopping and Demand Gen campaigns, for example "seasonal" or "clearance". Google says they are not shown to customers, take 1 to 100 characters, and allow up to 1,000 unique values per attribute across the account. Google Ads labels, by contrast, live in Google Ads and go on campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords. See our Shopping campaigns guide for how product groups work.

A simple naming scheme

This section is our suggestion, not Google guidance. Labels only help if everyone uses them the same way, so we keep a short written list and a prefix for each kind of label:

• Type: "Type: Brand", "Type: Non-brand", "Type: Competitor".
• Promotion or season: "Promo: Black Friday 2026", so old promotions can be filtered out later.
• Owner: "Owner: Alex" for shared accounts.
• Status: "Review", "Test", "Client approved".
• Automation: "Script: processed", "Rule: low CTR", so automated labels are easy to tell apart from human ones.

Decide at which level each label lives (campaign, ad group or keyword) and write it down, because labels are not inherited. Review the list every few months and remove labels nobody uses.

Frequently asked questions

Do Google Ads labels affect how my ads serve?

No. Labels organise items for filtering, reporting, rules and scripts. Nothing in Google's labels pages says they change bidding, targeting or delivery.

If I label a campaign, are its keywords labelled too?

No. Google says labels are not inherited. A campaign label applies only to the campaign; apply the label to ad groups, ads or keywords separately if you want it there.

Why do my label totals add up to more than my account total?

Because an item with two labels is counted in both rows. Google notes that with multiple labels per keyword, the rows are unlikely to add up to total clicks.

How many labels can one campaign or keyword have?

The Google Ads API system limits page lists 50 labels per item and 100,000 label assignments per account across all item types.

Can I use labels across client accounts in a manager account?

Yes. Google says manager account users can create, edit and apply labels for specific client accounts or across all campaigns, and scripts can apply account labels to group client accounts.

Labels make an account easier to read, but results still depend on the campaigns and the pages behind them. See our Google Ads basics guide, our website development service and all our services, or email [email protected].