How do I find the search terms wasting my Google Ads budget?

A keyword decides which searches your ad can show on. The search term is what the person actually typed. Google draws the line the same way: a search term is what someone enters when searching, and a keyword is what you add to an ad group so your ads reach the right people.

Broad and phrase match reach searches related to your keyword, not only the keyword itself, so the terms you pay for drift from the ones you wrote. Some of them convert. Some take money every week and never do.

A term that took real spend over a month and converted nothing is the plainest waste in an account, and the easiest to stop: a negative keyword tells Google not to show your ad on that search.

The call is still yours. A term with no conversions yet may be early in a long path to a sale, and a search for something you sell may need a better page, not a block.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Insights and reports › Search terms.
2. 02Set the date range to the last 30 days.
3. 03Click the filter button above the table and add two conditions: Conversions equal to 0, and Cost above an amount worth your time, such as $20. If either column is missing, add it from the columns icon.
4. 04Click the Cost column header to sort by it, highest first.
5. 05Read each term and ask whether it’s a search for something you sell. The Keyword column shows which of your keywords it matched, and Match type how closely.

Two things to know before you trust the list. Google leaves out terms that don’t have enough query activity, to protect searchers’ privacy, so the terms you can see may not account for all the spend. And a term is judged within its campaign: the same search can convert in one campaign and waste money in another.

From the same report:

1. 01Tick the box next to each term to block.
2. 02Click Add as negative keyword.
3. 03Choose Ad group or Campaign to add each term where it came from, or Negative keyword list to put them in a list you can apply to several campaigns.
4. 04Click Save.

Google adds terms from the report as exact-match negatives by default, which blocks that search and nothing else. To block more, change the match type with symbols: brackets for exact, quotation marks for phrase. Typed in without symbols, a negative is broad match.

• Negative exact blocks the search when it has exactly those words, in order, with nothing added.
• Negative phrase blocks any search containing those words in that order.
• Negative broad blocks any search containing all of the words, in any order.

Negatives don’t match close variants. Google’s example: the negative flowers blocks red flowers but not red flower. Add plurals and common misspellings yourself if you want them blocked too.

Then make sure a negative doesn’t block one of your own keywords. A keyword its own negative blocks can’t serve, and because it spends nothing, nobody notices. Google’s help says it plainly: make sure your negative keywords don’t overlap with your regular keywords, because this will cause your ad not to show.

1. 01Go to Campaigns › Audiences, keywords, and content › Search keywords and look at the status of a keyword you suspect. Google’s diagnosis says A negative keyword is preventing your ad from showing when one is. It tests the exact match version of the keyword only, so it can miss a conflict on a broader match.
2. 02Check your negative keyword lists too. They live in the shared library, under Tools › Shared library › Exclusion lists, and only work on the campaigns they’re applied to.
3. 03A week or two later, read the search terms report again. If a blocked term still shows, check the date: Campaigns › Change history says when each negative was added, and a report reaching back before that date will still list it.

Every week, Goldbeater reads the last 30 days of search terms. It raises a finding for any term whose clicks in one campaign cost at least $20, or the same in your account’s currency, summed across that campaign’s ad groups, with no conversions in that campaign. It marks the finding high at $200, and the figure on it is what the term cost.

It drafts an exact-match negative on that campaign, so only that search is blocked. Where the term is one of the campaign’s own keywords, even respaced or reordered, it drafts nothing: a negative would switch the keyword off, so the finding says to pause the keyword or narrow its match type instead.

A second check looks for the opposite mistake: an enabled keyword that a negative on its own campaign blocks. Goldbeater offers both fixes, removing the negative or pausing the keyword. It recommends pausing when another campaign bids on the same words and serves every place and language this one does, because then the negative is sending those searches there on purpose. Otherwise it recommends neither, because it can’t tell which of the two is the mistake.

How do I find negative keywords before they cost money?

Google’s advice is to look for searches similar to your keywords that are really for a different product: a store that sells sofas, not repairs, can add repair on day one. After that, the search terms report is where the rest show up.

Why is my Google Ads campaign not converting?

Check the measurement first: an action that stopped recording looks exactly like a campaign that stopped converting. How to check your conversion tracking covers it. If the tracking is sound, the search terms are the next place to look, because a campaign buying the wrong searches can’t convert them.

Should negatives be exact, phrase or broad?

Start with exact, which blocks one search and nothing else. Go broader only for words you never want to show on, such as a product you don’t sell, and check first that no keyword of yours contains them.

Why is a term I excluded still in the report?

Usually the date range reaches back before you added the negative; Change history shows when that was. Otherwise the search is a close variant, a plural or a misspelling, which negatives don’t match.