[Blog]Google Ads
How to find wasted spend in your Google Ads search terms
Wasted Google Ads spend hides in the search terms report, in searches you paid for that never became a lead. How to find them, exclude them and keep them out.
Key takeaways
- Wasted spend lives in the search terms report, the searches people actually typed, not in the keyword list you bid on.
- Sort search terms by cost and look for the ones that have spent real money over a long enough period without a conversion.
- Exclude them with negative keywords at the right level, an ad group, a campaign or a shared list.
- Negative keywords don’t match close variants, so add the plurals and misspellings you mean to block yourself.
- Make it a weekly habit, because new search terms keep arriving.
Wasted spend in Google Ads is almost always in the search terms report: the actual searches that triggered your ads, as opposed to the keywords you chose. To find it, sort those searches by cost, pick out the ones that spent money without converting, and block them with negative keywords. Then do it again every week, because the searches change faster than the keywords do.
Why you pay for searches you never chose
You bid on keywords, but you pay for searches. Depending on the match type, one keyword can show your ad for many different searches. Exact match keeps them close to the keyword; phrase and broad match let Google show your ad for searches it considers related. That reach is useful, and it’s also where the waste comes from.
For a B2B software company the pattern is familiar. You bid on “soc 2 compliance software” and some of the money goes to people searching for “soc 2 jobs”, “what is soc 2” or “soc 2 compliance course”. Each of those searches is related to your keyword. None of them comes from someone who wants to buy software this quarter.
Google doesn’t show every search in the report; it leaves out searches that very few people made. What it does show is enough to find the expensive mistakes.
How to find the searches that waste money
The answer is a short routine you can run in Google Ads:
- Open the search terms report for the campaigns you want to check.
- Pick a period long enough for searches to collect clicks: the last 30 days for a busy account, longer for a small one.
- Add the columns that matter: cost, clicks, conversions and cost per conversion.
- Sort by cost, highest first.
- Read down the list and mark every search that has spent money without a conversion and doesn’t look like a buyer.
- For each one you mark, decide where to block it: in this ad group, in the whole campaign, or everywhere.
Read the searches, don’t just filter them. A search with no conversions yet can still be a good one that needs a better page, and a search with a conversion can still be wrong for you if the lead was a student or a job seeker.
Signs a search will never convert
These patterns tend to cost B2B accounts money without bringing buyers:
- Jobs and careers: “jobs”, “salary”, “careers”, “hiring”, “internship”.
- Learning, not buying: “course”, “certification”, “training”, “tutorial”, “definition”.
- Free things: “free”, “template”, “pdf”, “example”, “open source”, when you don’t offer them.
- Someone else’s customers: another company’s name with “login”, “support” or “pricing”.
- The wrong meaning: words your product shares with another field. “Pipeline” means something different to a sales leader and to an oil company.
Be careful with informational searches such as “what is soc 2”. Some of those people become buyers later. If your goal is demo requests, they rarely convert on the first visit; if you have content for them, they may be worth a separate campaign with its own budget instead of a negative keyword.
How to block them with negative keywords
Negative keywords stop your ads from showing for searches that contain them. Three choices decide whether they work.
The level. Add a negative to an ad group when the search is wrong only there, to a campaign when it’s wrong for the whole campaign, and to a shared negative keyword list when it’s wrong for the whole account. Shared lists are the right home for exclusions like “jobs” and “careers”: you add them once and apply the list to every campaign.
The match type. Negative match types don’t behave like the keyword match types you bid with:
- A negative exact keyword blocks only that exact search.
- A negative phrase keyword blocks searches that contain the phrase, in that order.
- A negative broad keyword blocks searches that contain all of its words, in any order.
Close variants. Negative keywords don’t match close variants the way regular keywords do. Excluding “course” doesn’t exclude “courses”. Add the plurals, misspellings and other forms you want blocked.
Before you add a broad negative, look at what it would have blocked. One word can catch searches you want.
How to keep it from coming back
Search terms keep changing: new products get launched, new phrases appear, and broad match keeps finding related searches. A review you did once stops protecting the account within weeks. The habit that keeps waste down is small:
- Review the search terms of every campaign that spends each week, with the same sort and columns.
- Keep a shared list for exclusions that apply everywhere, and add to it as patterns repeat.
- Watch broad match keywords more closely than exact ones; they bring the most new searches.
- When a search converts but isn’t a keyword yet, add it as one, so it gets its own bid and, ideally, its own landing page.
And check what “conversion” means in your account. If it only counts form fills, a search can look productive while bringing leads your sales team rejects. Measuring cost per lead against CAC explains how to send later stages back to Google Ads, so the searches you exclude are the ones that really don’t bring customers.
Where Hyperdesk fits. Hyperdesk’s weekly review reads your search terms every Monday. It proposes exclusions, each with the clicks, spend and leads behind it and exactly what approving does, and it proposes converting searches as new keywords. You adjust or approve each one in the Inbox; nothing changes in Google Ads before that. If you’d rather keep doing it by hand, here’s how the two compare.
A checklist for this week
- Open the search terms report for the last 30 days and sort by cost.
- Mark searches with real spend, no conversions and no buyer intent.
- Block each at the right level, with the right negative match type.
- Add plurals and misspellings; negatives don’t cover close variants.
- Put account-wide exclusions in one shared list.
- Add converting searches as keywords.
- Put a recurring weekly review on your calendar.
Questions
How often should I review search terms?
Weekly, for an account that spends every day, so a bad search doesn’t run for a month before anyone sees it. A smaller account can review less often, as long as each search has had time to gather clicks.
How many clicks before I call a search term wasted?
There’s no universal number. Compare its clicks with how many clicks your account usually needs for one conversion. A search with several times that many clicks and no conversion is a strong candidate; one with a handful of clicks is still noise.
Will negative keywords hurt my reach?
They can if they’re too broad. A one-word negative like “free” also blocks every search that contains it. Start with exact or phrase negatives for the searches you’ve seen, and widen them only when you’re sure.
Is it wasted spend if the lead turns into a customer later?
No, and that’s the catch. If your conversions stop at the form, a search can look like waste and still bring customers. Send your CRM stages back to Google Ads before excluding searches whose leads you can’t judge yet.
Published . Questions or corrections: contact@hyperdesk-ai.com.
