Stop wasted budget with the search terms report: the step-by-step plan.

A search term that keeps getting clicks for two weeks without producing a single conversion usually costs you more than you think. On a daily budget of 30 euros, a single term costing 12 euros already eats forty percent of that budget, on a day that otherwise delivers little. The search terms report is where you track down leaks like this, but in practice the report is often skipped or only half read because it does not seem a priority next to bid strategies and ad copy. Below is a step-by-step plan you can run through in twenty minutes every week, including where the report deliberately shows you nothing.

That last point is at least as important as the plan itself. Anyone who only looks at the visible search terms and assumes that is the whole picture misses part of the traffic that is definitely costing budget. So do not only count what you can see, but also work on the assumption that some queries always stay under the radar.

What the report does and does not show

The Search terms report shows the actual queries that triggered your ads, along with the associated clicks, costs and conversions. Useful, but not complete. Google only shows search terms that were used by enough people, according to the official help pages. Low-volume queries are left out of the report for privacy reasons.

Performance Max works slightly differently. There you mainly get the Search term insights page, which groups search terms into themes instead of listing individual terms. That is handy for a quick overview, but less suitable for adding a negative keyword per individual term. Also bear in mind that conversions from store visits and in-store sales are not included in those insights, which can distort the picture for a physical shop.

So you are always working with a filtered view, never the full search data. That is no reason to ignore the report, but it is a reason not to make your conclusions too absolute at small volumes. If a low-traffic campaign shows only two or three odd terms per week, rather wait an extra week before drawing conclusions about a whole product segment.

The step-by-step plan for a weekly check

Put this in your calendar, for example every Monday morning before you do anything else to the account.

• Open the search terms report at campaign level and sort by cost, highest amount first.
• Go through the top twenty to thirty rows and check whether the search intent matches what you sell.
• Flag every term that has incurred costs without a conversion and that exceeds your target CPA.
• Add those terms as negative keywords, preferably at account level through a shared exclusion list, so other campaigns do not have to rediscover the same problem.
• Note in a separate tab which exclusions you added that week, so you can later trace whether a performance dip coincides with a change.

Twenty minutes a week is enough for most SMB accounts. Larger accounts with many product groups would do well to split this per product category, otherwise you drown in rows.

Three match types, three ways to exclude

A negative keyword uses the same match types as a regular keyword, and the difference is exactly where many advertisers go wrong.

• Broad, written as free software: blocks as soon as all the words appear in the query, in any order.
• Phrase, written as "free software": blocks only when that exact phrase appears in that order.
• Exact, written as [free software]: blocks only that precise query and nothing around it.

Do not just exclude that one term, exclude the whole category behind it.

If you do not sell second-hand products, for example, it helps to exclude a whole series of related terms in one go (second-hand, used, pre-owned) instead of fishing a new variant out of the report every week.

Common mistakes

The biggest mistake is waiting until the report happens to stand out in a monthly summary. By then, budget has sometimes been draining for months into the same kind of irrelevant queries. A second mistake is adding negative keywords only at campaign level. That works, but you repeat the same work for every new campaign you set up later.

What we often see in SMB accounts is that competitor brand names are excluded, but job-related terms such as vacancy, internship or course are forgotten. Those queries rarely carry purchase intent, but they show up in the report at some point for almost every kind of service or product.

A third pitfall is reacting too quickly to a single click without a conversion. At low search volume, one click says little. Rather wait until a term has collected several clicks without results before excluding it for good, unless the search intent clearly does not fit.

And then there is the mistake you only see in the numbers months later: adding negative keywords without recording them anywhere. Without an overview, nobody in the team remembers why a particular term was excluded, and a colleague sometimes accidentally removes it from the list again because its purpose is no longer visible.

Read also: Google Ads migrates automatically to AI Max, which makes the search terms report even more important. Advertising for an online store? Then also read how to prevent Merchant Center disapprovals in dropshipping.

Want to know how much budget is leaking from your account? Book a strategy call and we will map it out campaign by campaign.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I check the search terms report?

Weekly is a good rhythm for most SMB accounts. With a new campaign or a recently increased budget, it can be wise to look more often in the first two weeks, because odd search terms surface faster then.

Why do I not see certain search terms in the report?

Google only shows search terms that were used by enough people. Low-volume queries are not shown individually for privacy reasons. For a broader view of those smaller volumes you can consult the Search term insights page, which groups terms into themes.

Should I add negative keywords at campaign or account level?

For terms that are logically irrelevant to your whole account, such as job vacancies or second-hand products, a shared exclusion list at account level is more efficient. For terms that only clash with one specific campaign or product group, you are better off adding them directly at that level.