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Most Google Ads accounts are bleeding budget on irrelevant searches right now. The Search Terms Report tells you exactly where — but the majority of advertisers check it monthly at best, or never. Treat it as a weekly ritual, not a quarterly audit, and your cost-per-conversion will drop faster than any bidding strategy change will produce.

What the Search Terms Report Actually Shows

The Search Terms Report in Google Ads shows you the actual queries that triggered your ads — not the keywords you're bidding on, but the real-world searches your money is paying for. These two things are often very different.

When you bid on a broad match or phrase match keyword, Google's matching algorithm decides what counts as "close enough." That algorithm has gotten more aggressive over time — especially since broad match became the default and Smart Bidding expanded its reach. The result: your ads show for searches you never intended to target.

The Search Terms Report is where you discover what Google actually did with your budget. It's arguably the most important hygiene report in the platform.

Where to find it

In Google Ads: Campaigns → Keywords → Search terms. You can filter by date, segment by campaign, and download as CSV for bulk analysis. Add the "Added/Excluded" column to see which terms are already in your account as keywords or negatives.

What to Look For (And What to Ignore)

Not every irrelevant query is worth acting on. A search that spent $0.40 and never converted isn't worth 20 minutes of analysis. Here's how to triage the report efficiently:

High-spend, zero-conversion terms

Sort by cost, descending. Any term that has spent more than your average CPA target with zero conversions is a candidate for exclusion. Don't just add these as negatives automatically — check whether they're contextually relevant. Sometimes a high-spend/low-convert term tells you about a landing page problem, not a targeting problem.

Off-topic terms with volume

These are the real budget leaks. A plumbing company bidding on "pipe fittings" and showing up for "DIY pipe fitting videos" — that's an off-topic term with volume. It's pulling real impressions and real clicks from people who will never convert.

Brand terms you're not bidding on intentionally

If a competitor's brand name is appearing in your search terms, you're bidding on it by proxy through broad match. Decide whether that's intentional or accidental, then act accordingly.

Terms that reveal new keyword opportunities

The report surfaces queries that are converting well but aren't yet in your keyword list. Add these as exact match keywords so you can bid on them directly, set appropriate bids, and track their performance cleanly.

What you see What it means Action
High spend, 0 conversions Budget drain — possibly irrelevant query or poor landing page match Add as negative, or fix landing page
Off-topic query with impressions Match type too broad; Google straying Add as negative keyword
Converting term not in keyword list Hidden gem — Google found it via broad match Add as exact match keyword
Competitor brand in search terms Unintentional competitor bidding Decide strategy: keep or exclude
Informational queries ("how to", "what is") Research intent, unlikely to convert Add as negative (phrase or exact)

Building a Negative Keyword List From the Report

The most direct action from the Search Terms Report is building negative keywords. Here's how to do it systematically rather than reactively:

Match type matters for negatives

Negative exact match ([term]) blocks only that precise query. Negative phrase match blocks any search containing that phrase in that order. Negative broad match (rarely useful) blocks searches with all words in any order. Most of the time, negative phrase match is what you want — it's precise enough to avoid over-blocking but broad enough to catch variations.

Use a shared negative keyword list

Rather than adding negatives at the campaign level one by one, build a shared negative keyword list and apply it across all relevant campaigns. When you find a bad term in Campaign A, it gets blocked in Campaign B too. This is especially important for brands running multiple search campaigns targeting overlapping audiences.

Build category-level negative lists

The best accounts have tiered negative keyword lists: account-level always-negatives (jobs, careers, free, DIY, Wikipedia), campaign-level category exclusions, and ad-group-level precision exclusions. The Search Terms Report feeds all three levels.

Common mistake

Adding too many negatives at once, especially broad or phrase negatives, can accidentally block converting queries. When doing a large batch cleanup, add in waves and monitor conversion volume for 7 days before the next round.

The Performance Max Problem

Performance Max campaigns have a severely limited Search Terms Report. Until 2024, you couldn't see search terms at all for PMax. Google opened a narrow window — but only shows terms with "significant activity," which in practice means you're still blind to the majority of queries your PMax campaigns trigger.

This is one of the strongest arguments for keeping traditional Search campaigns running alongside PMax. Your Search campaigns' Search Terms Reports give you signal about what queries are converting, which you can use to inform your PMax asset group strategy and add negatives at the account level that flow through to PMax.

For PMax-only accounts, you're flying partially blind. Push for the Search Terms Report access wherever you can, and use account-level negative keyword lists aggressively.

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The Weekly Search Terms Workflow

This is how Darlington's team processes Search Terms Reports across client accounts every week. It takes 15–20 minutes per account and it compounds over time.

  1. Set date range to last 7 days. Don't let it default to 30 — you want fresh signal.
  2. Sort by cost, descending. Find the terms spending the most money first.
  3. Add "Conversions" column. Cross-reference spend against outcome.
  4. Flag anything spending >1x target CPA with 0 conversions. These go in the "probably negative" bucket.
  5. Scan for off-topic terms manually. The algorithm doesn't tell you what's irrelevant to your business — you have to read it.
  6. Identify converting terms not in keyword list. Add as exact match.
  7. Batch-add negatives to shared lists. Not campaign by campaign — shared lists.
  8. Document what you added and why. A simple Google Sheet. Future you will thank present you.

Advanced: Search Term Segmentation

Once you're on top of the basics, there are higher-leverage ways to use the Search Terms Report:

Segment by conversion action

If you're tracking multiple conversion actions (purchase, lead form, phone call), segment the Search Terms Report by conversion type. A term with 0 purchases but 8 phone calls might be valuable — you just can't see it if you're only looking at total conversions.

Cross-campaign analysis

Export search terms from all campaigns to a single spreadsheet. Pivot by term, summing spend and conversions across campaigns. You'll find terms showing up in multiple campaigns (budget duplication) and terms converting in one campaign but wasting money in another.

Query theme clustering

Group search terms by intent theme, not just by keyword. Terms like "cheap", "affordable", "low cost" cluster together. Terms like "how to", "tutorial", "guide" cluster together. Build negatives and new campaigns around themes, not individual terms.

Pro tip

Export 90 days of search terms to a spreadsheet quarterly and do a deep analysis. You'll find patterns invisible in weekly snapshots — seasonal query drifts, emerging competitor queries, and systematically underperforming match types.

The Bottom Line

The Search Terms Report isn't a set-and-forget tool. It's a living record of how Google is spending your money. The accounts that review it weekly — and act on what they find — consistently outperform accounts that don't, regardless of bidding strategy, campaign structure, or creative quality.

If you only have 20 minutes per week to spend on your Google Ads account, spend them here.

Frequently asked questions

Weekly is the sweet spot for most accounts spending $5,000+/month. Below that threshold, every two weeks is fine. Monthly is too infrequent — you're letting budget bleed for 30 days before you catch it.
No. Google filters out low-volume queries citing privacy protections, which means a portion of your traffic is always hidden. Some studies suggest 15–30% of search terms are never shown. It's a frustrating limitation, but reviewing what you can see is still far better than not reviewing at all.
Not necessarily. Broad match, when paired with Smart Bidding and good audience signals, can surface high-converting queries you'd never think to bid on. The answer isn't to restrict match types — it's to maintain an aggressive negative keyword strategy so broad match works in your favour.
When you click "Add as negative keyword" directly from the Search Terms Report, it adds an exact match negative at the campaign or ad group level for that specific query. Adding via a shared negative keyword list gives you more control over match type and lets you apply the exclusion across multiple campaigns simultaneously. Always prefer the shared list approach for anything you want to block broadly.
Partially. Google now shows search terms for PMax campaigns but only for queries with "significant" activity — meaning the majority of your PMax search traffic is still hidden. You can add account-level negative keyword lists that apply to PMax, which is currently your best lever for query control in those campaigns.