If you're running Google Ads and you're not checking your search term report regularly, you're almost certainly wasting money. That's not a scare tactic - it's just what happens when broad match and phrase match keywords trigger searches you never intended to show up for.
I check search term reports across every account I manage, and I'd estimate that a first-time review typically uncovers 20-30% of spend going to irrelevant queries. For an account spending $5,000 a month, that's $1,000-$1,500 going nowhere. The fix takes about 15 minutes a week once you know what you're looking at.
Where to Find Your Search Term Report
Head to Insights and reports > Search terms in your Google Ads account. You can also get there from the Keywords tab, then click Search terms at the top.
What you'll see is a list of the actual phrases people typed into Google that triggered your ads. This is different from your keywords – your keywords are what you're bidding on, but search terms are what people actually searched. With broad match getting broader every year, the gap between these two keeps growing.
Add the Keyword column if it's not already showing. This lets you see which keyword triggered each search term, which is critical for understanding where the problems are coming from.
What to Look for First: The Obvious Waste
Start with the low-hanging fruit. Sort by Cost (highest first) and scan for anything that clearly doesn't belong.
I picked up a new client last year who was running campaigns for a commercial cleaning business. Their broad match keyword "office cleaning" was triggering ads for "cleaning games for kids", "office cleaning jobs near me", and "how to clean office chair wheels". They'd spent over $800 in a single month on searches that would never convert.
That's an extreme example, but every account has some version of it. Look for:
- Job searches – "[your service] jobs", "hiring", "salary", "careers"
- DIY/how-to queries – people looking to do it themselves, not hire you
- Wrong location – searches mentioning cities or countries you don't serve
- Competitor names – unless you're deliberately targeting them
- Completely unrelated terms – broad match can get creative
Don't just glance at the list. Actually read through the top 50–100 search terms by spend. It takes five minutes and you'll almost always find something.
The Patterns That Actually Matter
Individual bad search terms are easy to spot. The real value is in finding patterns.
Say you're an accountant running ads on "tax return help". You might see a cluster of search terms like "free tax return help", "tax return help for students", "ato tax return help online". Each one individually might only have a few dollars of spend, but together they're telling you something – there's a segment of searchers looking for free or self-service options who will never become clients.
That's where negative keyword strategy comes in. Instead of adding 15 individual negative keywords, you add "free" as a negative and eliminate the whole pattern at once.
My take: most accounts I audit have way too many individual negative keywords and not enough pattern-based ones. A well-chosen list of 30–50 negative keywords applied at the campaign or account level does more than 500 random negatives scattered across ad groups.
How to Read the Numbers in Your Search Term Report
The search terms themselves are only half the story. The metrics tell you whether a search term is actually working or just burning budget.
Here's what I focus on:
1. Cost with zero conversions
Filter for search terms that have spent money but produced zero conversions. Sort by Cost, highest first. Anything over your target CPA with no conversions is a strong candidate for a negative keyword.
For a client spending $3,000/month on lead generation with a $50 target CPA, I'd flag any search term that's spent over $75–$100 with no leads. That's a pretty generous buffer – if something's spent twice your CPA target and hasn't converted, the search term probably isn't going to start working.
2. High impressions, low CTR
Search terms with lots of impressions but a click-through rate well below your account average are dragging down your Quality Score. They're also a signal that your ad isn't a good match for what the person searched.
These might not be costing you much directly, but they're hurting your account health. For these terms, either:
- Tighten your keyword match types
- Add negatives to block obviously mismatched intent
- Or create more relevant ad copy and landing pages if the intent is actually good
3. Converters you didn't expect
This is the fun part. Look for search terms that are converting well but aren't in your keyword list. These are free keyword ideas straight from your actual customers.
I've found entire new ad groups this way. One e-commerce client was running ads for "work boots" and we discovered through search terms that "steel cap boots for warehouse" was converting at three times the rate of the generic terms. That became its own ad group with tailored ad copy, and CPA dropped by 40% for that segment.
When you find winners like this:
- Add them as exact or phrase match keywords
- Build tightly themed ad groups around them
- Write ad copy that mirrors the search term language
Setting Up a Review Schedule That Sticks
The biggest mistake with search term reports is treating it as a one-time cleanup. You do it once, add a bunch of negatives, and then don't touch it for three months. By then, you've accumulated a fresh batch of irrelevant queries eating your budget.
Here's what works:
- New campaigns or keywords: Check every 2–3 days for the first two weeks. New keywords attract the most garbage early on.
- Established campaigns with decent volume: Weekly reviews, 15 minutes max. Focus on the top spend terms since your last review.
- Low-volume campaigns: Fortnightly or monthly is fine. There just won't be enough data to act on more frequently.
Set a calendar reminder. The accounts that perform best aren't the ones with the cleverest bidding strategies – they're the ones where someone actually looks at the data regularly. Take those numbers with the usual grain of salt, but consistent maintenance beats one-off optimisation every time.
What Google Doesn't Show You
Worth mentioning: Google doesn't show you every search term. If a query had very few impressions, it gets lumped into an "other search terms" bucket. In some accounts, this hidden bucket can represent 30–40% of total queries.
You can't do much about that directly, but it's another reason why pattern-based negatives are more effective than trying to catch every bad query individually. If you've added "free" and "jobs" and "DIY" as negatives, those rules apply to the hidden queries too.
For Performance Max campaigns, the search term data is even more limited. Google gives you "search themes" rather than actual queries, which makes the whole process harder. If you're running PMax, pay extra attention to your search campaign data – it'll give you insights that apply across campaign types.
Quick Workflow You Can Reuse Weekly
- Go to Insights and reports > Search terms.
- Set date range to since last review.
- Add the Keyword column.
- Sort by Cost (desc).
- Add negatives for obvious waste and clear intent mismatches.
- Flag any term spending 1.5–2x your target CPA with zero conversions.
- Pull converting search terms into new keywords/ad groups.
Key Takeaways
- Check your search term report weekly for active campaigns – and actually schedule it.
- Sort by cost first to find the biggest waste quickly.
- Look for patterns, not just individual bad terms – one smart negative keyword beats twenty specific ones.
- Flag anything that's spent more than 1.5–2x your target CPA with zero conversions.
- Mine your converting search terms for new keyword and ad group ideas.
- Remember Google hides a chunk of your search terms, so pattern-based negatives do the heavy lifting.
If your search terms are a mess and you don't have time to clean them up every week, that's literally what I do – get in touch and I'll take a look.