Why Most People Skip This
The Google Ads search terms report is one of the most valuable tools available to any advertiser. It shows you the actual searches people typed before clicking your ad. These are the real queries that triggered your ads and cost you money, distinct from the keywords you're explicitly bidding on.
In theory, every Google Ads manager reviews this report regularly. In practice, most don't. The report is buried under multiple menus, can contain thousands of rows, and the manual process of reviewing each term, deciding whether it's relevant, and adding negatives one at a time is tedious enough that it gets deprioritized every single week.
The result: wasted spend compounds silently. A few irrelevant clicks per day don't look alarming. But over 30 days, those clicks add up to 15 to 35% of total spend in a typical Google Ads search account.
This guide breaks the process into a focused 10-minute routine that covers the highest-impact actions. It's not exhaustive, but doing it weekly will catch more waste than most advertisers catch in a month of sporadic reviews.
Before You Start: Open the Right Report
Navigate to the Search Terms Report
In Google Ads, go to Insights & Reports → Search Terms. Set the date range to the last 30 days. This gives you enough data to spot patterns without being overwhelmed by volume.
Sort by Cost (descending). This puts the most expensive search terms at the top, which is where the biggest waste is hiding.
The 10-Minute Audit: 5 Steps
Identify the Zero-Conversion Money Burners
Scan the top of the list (sorted by cost) and look for terms with meaningful spend but zero conversions. These are your highest-priority waste terms.
"Meaningful spend" depends on your account. For some businesses it's $10, for others it's $100. A good rule: if a term has spent more than 2x your average cost-per-conversion and still has zero conversions, it's a strong candidate for blocking.
Don't try to evaluate every term. Focus on the top 20-30 by cost. That's where 80% of your recoverable waste lives.
Categorize by Intent
For each waste term you've identified, ask one question: why is this person searching? The answer determines both whether to block the term and which match type to use.
Queries containing: salary, jobs, hiring, career, apprenticeship, qualification, course, training. These people will never become customers. One broad match negative per root word blocks the entire category.
Queries containing: how to, DIY, tutorial, fix it myself, guide, youtube. These people are explicitly trying to avoid hiring a professional.
Queries containing a specific competitor's name. These searchers want that competitor, not you. One phrase match negative per competitor brand blocks the name in any search context.
Queries containing: free, cheap, discount, coupon, deal. If your business doesn't compete on price, these clicks rarely convert. Exception: if you offer a free consultation, use phrase match on specific patterns like "free advice" instead of blocking "free" entirely.
Some terms look relevant but haven't converted yet. "emergency dentist near me" with spend but no conversions might just need more time or a better landing page. Don't block these. Note them and review again next week.
Add Negatives with the Right Match Type
This is where most people go wrong. The instinct is to select junk terms in the search terms report and click "Add as negative keyword." That adds them as exact match by default, which only blocks that specific query.
Instead, go to your negative keyword lists directly (Tools & Settings → Negative keyword lists) and add the root patterns with intentional match types:
- Broad match for intent categories:
salary,jobs,DIY,tutorial,free - Phrase match for competitor names:
"smile direct club","invisalign" - Exact match only for one-off queries where the individual words might be legitimate elsewhere
Using keyword lists (rather than campaign-level negatives) means the negatives apply across all campaigns automatically.
Check for Patterns You Missed Last Time
Scroll past the high-spend terms and look for clusters, groups of related queries that individually cost little but collectively represent significant waste.
For example, you might find 15 different variations of "dental hygienist salary" that each cost $5-$10. Individually, none look alarming. Collectively, that's $75 to $150 wasted, and it's the same intent pattern that one broad negative would eliminate entirely.
Pro tip: Use your browser's Ctrl+F (or Cmd+F) to search the report for common waste words: "salary," "jobs," "free," "how to," "DIY," "youtube." This is faster than scanning every row and catches terms you might miss by just reading the list.
Note What's Working
The search terms report isn't just about finding waste. Also note the high-converting queries, terms with good conversion rates that you're not explicitly bidding on. These are candidates for adding as positive keywords in their own ad groups with tailored ad copy.
This takes 60 seconds and occasionally surfaces a keyword opportunity worth more than all the waste you blocked combined.
What a Clean Audit Looks Like
Here's an illustrative breakdown of what a 30-day audit typically surfaces for a $5,000/month dental practice account:
Total terms reviewed: 847
Total spend: $4,791
Waste identified: $3,247 (67.8% of spend)
Waste breakdown:
- Job seeker queries: $807, blocked with 5 broad negatives
- DIY/informational: $525, blocked with 4 broad negatives
- Competitor brand clicks: $443, blocked with 3 phrase negatives
- Free/bargain seekers: $67, blocked with 1 broad negative
- Irrelevant products/services: $318, blocked with 6 phrase negatives
- Miscellaneous junk: $109, blocked with 4 exact negatives
- Price research (borderline): $240, monitoring rather than blocked
- Legitimate terms (KEEP): $1,544, no action needed
Total negatives added: 23 (replacing what would have been 100+ exact negatives)
Projected annual savings: $38,964
Twenty-three well-chosen negatives with the right match types. That's enough to form the entire defensive layer at this scale, and it will catch future variations of the same waste patterns without any additional maintenance for weeks.
Making This a Weekly Habit
The 10-minute audit works best as a weekly routine. Here's why:
- A weekly cadence catches problems before they compound. A junk query pattern running for 7 days costs far less than one running for 30.
- The list stays manageable. Reviewing 7 days of search terms is a quick scan. Reviewing 30 days is a project.
- Pattern recognition builds over time. After a few weeks, you'll start recognizing waste categories instantly and the process gets faster.
Block 15 minutes on your calendar every Monday morning. Open the search terms report. Follow the 5 steps. Close it. That habit alone will save more budget than most other account-tuning activities combined.
When Manual Review Isn't Enough
The 10-minute audit works well for accounts with a few hundred search terms per month. At higher volumes (thousands of terms per week), the manual process doesn't scale. The search terms report grows faster than you can review it, and waste accumulates between reviews.
There's a second structural limitation worth flagging too. Google now redacts 27 to 73% of search term data, citing privacy. The manual audit only covers the visible portion. Independent research on 933 campaigns (Taikun Digital, 2025) found those hidden queries cost 51% more per click and convert at half the rate of visible ones, so the waste you can see is rarely the whole picture.
That's where automated scanning helps. Daily automated review of your search terms catches new waste the day it appears, before it has time to compound. Combined with intelligent match type recommendations and the Confidence Engine (which checks every proposed negative against your active positive keywords before applying it), the reactive manual process becomes a proactive defensive layer.
The manual audit teaches you how waste works. Automated scanning catches what you can't see and ensures consistency between reviews. Both have their place in a serious negative keyword practice.
Want to automate this audit?
SearchSavior scans your search terms daily, flags waste with AI-powered intent analysis, and lets you block it with precision match type control (Exact, Phrase, or Broad).
Every action requires your click. No automatic blocking.
Upload a 30-day search terms CSV and get a free waste audit here.
About the author: Michael Hulsmann is the founder of SearchSavior, a tool that automates Google Ads search term analysis and helps advertisers block recurring waste with precision negative match type control.