Spend that buys nothing, found. Judged on your account, not a rule of thumb.
20 checks look for money that leaves the account and returns nothing: searches nobody meant to buy, keywords past the point of proof, places and hours that never convert, settings that spend outside Google Search.
- 20 checks
- Bars from your own numbers
- Guards your live keywords
The 20 checks in this area. As the app names them.
20Checks listed here
Measurement
Can the numbers be trusted
Ads pointing at pages that do not load
Ads sending paid clicks to pages that answer 404 or a server error. Common after a site rebuild, since nobody tells the ads account a URL has gone.
Ads pointing at pages that do not load: How it decides and what to do
Structure
How it is built and set
A Display or Video campaign with no frequency cap
A Display or Video campaign with no frequency cap, so a few heavy users can absorb hundreds of impressions each.
A Display or Video campaign with no frequency cap: How it decides and what to doA Search campaign spending outside Google Search
A Search campaign also serving on Search Partners or the Display network. Both are on by default, convert differently, and blur the campaign's numbers.
A Search campaign spending outside Google Search: How it decides and what to doA negative keyword switching off one you chose
A negative keyword that switches off a keyword you chose. The keyword still says enabled and still shows a Quality Score, and its own searches never reach it. Checked against every negative in force.
A negative keyword switching off one you chose: How it decides and what to doBroad match running with nothing to stop it
Broad match running with no negative keywords at all. Broad match lets Google decide what a keyword means, and negatives are the only place the account can disagree.
Broad match running with nothing to stop it: How it decides and what to doBuying clicks from people who are not in the country
Location set to people 'in or interested in' a place, Google's default. Someone abroad reading about your city counts as your market, and with no location at all a campaign serves worldwide.
Buying clicks from people who are not in the country: How it decides and what to doNothing refused anywhere outside Search
No placement or content exclusions anywhere outside Search. Sensitive content categories are counted too.
Nothing refused anywhere outside Search: How it decides and what to doPerformance Max with no negative keyword list
Performance Max with no negative keyword list attached. The list the account keeps for Search is usually never attached here.
Performance Max with no negative keyword list: How it decides and what to doStill paying to advertise to people who already bought
Display and YouTube campaigns that exclude no audience list at all, so they can keep reaching people who already bought. Says whether the account has a list it could exclude.
Still paying to advertise to people who already bought: How it decides and what to do
Spend
Where the money goes
Campaigns spending with no conversion at all
A campaign spending real money with no conversion at all. Each keyword can sit under the bar while the campaign is far past it. Zero can mean broken tracking, a page that fails or too little demand, so nothing is guessed.
Campaigns spending with no conversion at all: How it decides and what to doHours of the day that take money and return nothing
Hours of the day that take money and return nothing, on accounts with enough conversions to read hour by hour.
Hours of the day that take money and return nothing: How it decides and what to doHow much of the budget Google chose
The share of spend on searches nobody added or excluded, the ones Google matched on its own. Not waste in itself: one percentage to watch month to month.
How much of the budget Google chose: How it decides and what to doKeywords spending past the point of proof with nothing back
Keywords that spent past the point of proof with nothing back. The bar comes from the account's own numbers, not from one fixed rule. One finding per keyword, so you can agree to four of six.
Keywords spending past the point of proof with nothing back: How it decides and what to doMoney going to phone apps nobody chose
Display money going to phone apps nobody chose, mostly games where a tap is an accident. Names what those apps cost in the period read.
Money going to phone apps nobody chose: How it decides and what to doNegatives that let their plural through
Negatives that let their plural through, because negative keywords do not match close variants. The plural is proposed beside each one.
Negatives that let their plural through: How it decides and what to doPlaces taking money and returning nothing
Countries that took real money across enough clicks to judge and returned nothing, inside campaigns that convert elsewhere. Same arithmetic as the keyword waste check.
Places taking money and returning nothing: How it decides and what to doSearches for other companies' support lines or public services
Spend resting on searches for other companies' support lines or public services. Budget raises wait until it is cleared.
Searches for other companies' support lines or public services: How it decides and what to doSearches taking money with nothing back
Searches that took money and returned nothing, judged on the account's own numbers. Your brand is never named, and searches for competitors you listed are proposed as negatives on every Search campaign.
Searches taking money with nothing back: How it decides and what to doSmall searches for things the products never mention
Small searches for things the products never mention, added up by theme. Each search is too small to notice; together they are a share of the spend.
Small searches for things the products never mention: How it decides and what to doWhere the display and video money actually went
The placements where Display and video money went, turning 'Display is not working' into a list of places you would or would not have chosen.
Where the display and video money actually went: How it decides and what to do
When does zero mean something?
'Twenty clicks and no conversion' is a number somebody typed. Whether 20 clicks prove anything depends on the account. On an account that converts often, 20 clicks with nothing is already unusual. On one that converts rarely, it happens all the time, and it takes many more clicks before zero is a fact.
So the click bar is set from your account's own conversion rate: the lower the rate, the more clicks a search or a keyword gets before it is judged.
Clicks are not the whole story either: a €4 click and a €0.40 click cannot share one count. So a search or a keyword is flagged only once it has also spent past a money bar, set from what a conversion costs on your account.
Every bar is computed from your own account, in a way that one runaway keyword cannot move the line for all the others.
Try the arithmetic on your own numbers with the free wasted spend threshold calculator.
What it protects.
Searches that sell
A negative that would also block a search converting on the same campaign is not proposed. A search can still be named as waste on one campaign while it sells on another, so read the list before you block.
Your own keywords
Before a negative goes live, Oppy checks it against the keywords the account runs, and refuses one that would block a live keyword.
Words a buyer might type
When a word could belong to a real customer, Oppy asks before blocking it.
A saving, or a redirection?
If an account already runs out of budget, money freed by blocking junk is spent again the same day on better searches. That is a redirection, not a saving, and the finding says so.
Oppy reads how much impression share the account loses to budget. When the account is short of budget, a waste finding is counted as money moved to better searches, never as money back in your pocket. The two are never added into one total.
Questions about wasted spend.
Anything else? Ask Oppy in the product, or write to the team.
How does Oppy decide a search term is wasted?
It needs two things: enough clicks that zero conversions is unlikely to be chance at your account's conversion rate, and spend past a money bar set from what a conversion costs on your account. The list is a finding to read: negatives come as a task you approve.
Will Oppy add negative keywords by itself?
No. A negative is proposed as a task and waits for your approval, in both modes, because it blocks searches nobody has seen yet. In Autonomous, Oppy can still pause a keyword that kept spending without converting, inside your money limits.
Does it look at Performance Max and Display too?
Yes. It reads where Display and video money went by placement, flags phone apps nobody chose, checks for missing placement exclusions and frequency caps, and checks Performance Max for a negative keyword list.
How much wasted spend does a typical account have?
It varies too much for one number to mean anything. The audit prints your own figure, with the searches, keywords and settings behind it, and the arithmetic that produced it.
Put Oppy to work on your account.
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