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The short answer
Download 30 to 90 days of search terms. Set two bars from your own account: enough clicks for zero conversions to mean something at your conversion rate, and enough spend that the search had a fair chance. Block the searches past both bars that never converted, write plurals in, never block anything that converted, and give converting searches their own exact keyword. Repeat every week or two.
What the report shows, and what it hides
The search terms report lists what people typed when your ads showed. Your keywords are what you bid on. The search terms are what you actually bought.
It never covers all of your spend. Google leaves out searches that only a few people typed, for privacy, so part of the cost sits in no row at all. Read the report as a large sample, not the full truth.
Where to find it
In Google Ads: Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Add the columns for conversions and conversion value before you export.
Export the right window
Take the last 30 days on a busy account, and 90 on a small one, so each search has enough clicks to judge. Keep the campaign, ad group and keyword columns: you will need them to place negatives in the right spot.
Leave out the last few days if your conversions arrive late. A lead that closes a week after the click makes last week's searches look worse than they are.
Set two bars from your own account
The common rule, block a search after 20 clicks with no conversion, ignores the one number that matters: your conversion rate. At 10%, 20 clicks with nothing happen by chance about one time in eight. At 2%, they happen most of the time.
So set the click bar from your own conversion rate: the lower it is, the more clicks a search needs before zero means something. The free wasted spend threshold calculator gives the number for your account.
Clicks alone are not enough, because prices differ. Add a money bar: a search must also have spent well past what a conversion should cost you, or what you actually pay per conversion when there is no target.
Take figures that are typical of the account. One runaway campaign should not move the bar for every search.
Sort every search into four groups
Waste
- What it means
- Past both bars, no conversion, for something you do not sell
- What to do
- Add a negative
Too early
- What it means
- Under one of the bars
- What to do
- Leave it and read it again next time
Winner without a home
- What it means
- Converts, but through a keyword aimed at something else
- What to do
- Add it as an exact keyword in its own ad group
Working
- What it means
- Converts through the right keyword
- What to do
- Leave it alone
Most of the report will be 'too early'. That is normal, and it is the reason a rule of thumb blocks good searches: it judges them before they had a chance.
Write negatives that actually block
Negative keywords behave differently from normal keywords. The difference costs money when it is missed.
- No close variants. A negative does not match plurals or synonyms. A negative for 'job' does not block 'jobs', so write both. Misspellings are covered automatically.
- Broad negatives block a search that contains all their words, in any order.
- Phrase negatives block a search that contains their words in that order.
- Exact negatives block only that search, word for word.
Place each negative where it belongs. A search that is wrong for the whole business goes in a shared list. A search that is right for one campaign but wrong for another goes on the campaign where it does not belong.
Check you are not blocking yourself
A broad negative can switch off a keyword you added. The keyword still says enabled and shows a Quality Score, and its own searches never reach it.
What you should never block
- Anything that converted, in any ad group, whatever it cost. Move it, do not block it.
- Words a buyer might type. 'Cheap' is waste for a luxury brand and a buying signal for a discount shop. Ask before you block.
- Your own brand, unless a separate campaign already covers it on purpose.
Harvest the winners
A broad keyword catches a search, the search converts, and it keeps being answered by an ad written for something else. Give it an exact keyword, an ad group of its own and an ad that answers it.
Read a long period when you look for these. A search that converts now and then is exactly the kind a 30-day window hides, and it rarely has a keyword yet.
Performance Max searches
Performance Max buys searches too. Google's search term insights group them into categories rather than listing every query. Read them for your brand name and for searches your Search campaigns were built for.
Brand exclusions keep Performance Max off your own name. Negative keywords can also be applied to Performance Max, which matters most for the searches you would block anywhere, such as jobs and free.
How often to do it
Every week on a busy account, every two to four weeks on a small one. Keep a short log of what you blocked and why, so the next person does not undo it.
Optizads reads the report every week against your account's own bars, never names a search that converted, and proposes the negatives campaign by campaign as one task you approve.