We find that experiencing positive emotion at the outset of an online product search primes emotionally congruent thoughts. This priming makes consumers more likely to use positive emotion keywords (e.g., a happy book) than neutral keywords (e.g., a paperback book) to describe the product they are searching for.

As a result, consumers are more likely to click on paid search ads if they used a positive emotion keyword rather than a neutral keyword in their query.

People in good moods use happy words in their searches, which can lead to improved ad performance.