Every account we take over has money leaking here, and it is the fastest thing to fix. The search terms report shows what you actually paid for — which is not the same as your keyword list.
How to read it
Sort by cost, descending. Not by impressions, not by clicks. You are looking for the searches that took real money and returned nothing. Twenty minutes on the top of that list usually pays for itself the same week.
The four categories worth excluding
- Research intent — "how to", "diy", "what is", "review". People learning, not buying.
- Free and cheap — "free", "cheap", "wholesale", "second hand". They will not pay your price.
- Wrong product — adjacent items you do not sell. Broad match is generous with these.
- Competitor and marketplace names, unless you deliberately decided to bid there.
Where people go wrong
Blocking too aggressively
A negative list built from assumptions rather than data will block converting traffic. Every negative should come from a search term that actually cost you money without returning any.
Wrong match type on the negative
A broad negative can silently exclude far more than intended. Phrase and exact negatives are safer defaults.
Set once, never revisited
Search behaviour drifts, new products change what you match, and Google's matching gets looser over time. This is a weekly job on spending campaigns, not a one-off.
An agency that cannot show you what they added to the negative list last week is not reading your search terms. That is most of the job.