Stop wasted Google Ads queries with search terms and negative keywords

Open the "search terms" report in Google Ads and you sometimes find terms that do not resemble the keywords you registered. Another company's service name, research, a completely different product. For a term that has spent money, check the search intent and your own policy before you decide to stop it.

There are two ways to stop it. Stop the "keyword" that is picking up terms broadly, or stop only a specific term with a "negative keyword." Which you choose depends on which keyword the wasted terms are coming from.

This article uses judgments that were actually made from the search terms report, in our own Search campaign running at ¥3,000 a day, as the example, and walks through the steps. At the end there is a prompt for ChatGPT or Gemini that you can use with the report pasted in.

Look at the "search term" and "match type" columns first

The search terms report opens from "Search terms" on the keywords tab. Look at these two columns.

• Search term: the words the person actually searched
• Match type: which keyword, at which match, caused the ad to show for that search term

These two columns come before impressions or clicks, because they decide where to stop it. If wasted terms are concentrated from one keyword, that keyword is the cause. If they come scattered from various keywords, exclude them term by term.

In our campaign, 8 of 23 impressions overall came from one keyword. It was the intent match (broad match) keyword 「EC 集客」, in the ad group aimed at EC. The terms delivered from there were these 7.

All 8 were from people who were not looking for the product.

Split terms into four

Whether to stop a term is easier to judge if you split terms into these four.

A term that is "out of scope," looking for a product you do not offer, is separate from "another company's name," looking up a competitor. Searches for another company's name include people looking for the competitor's official site and people comparing several services. The term alone does not decide which. If you rush to exclude "close, but a different intent," you also stop people who might become customers later.

What to decide before you exclude another company's name

When you find a competitor's name, check in this order.

1. Does the field overlap with your own service? A name that does not overlap can be treated as out of scope
2. Is the policy to run ads on searches for the competitor's name? If the policy is not to, exclude it
3. If you will run them, do you have ad text and a destination that answer someone who is comparing?
4. Can you measure the result you will use for the judgment, such as a signup or an inquiry?
5. Can you set a ceiling on the cost of the test, and a period to review after the change?

We also decided, for now, to exclude searches for other companies' names where the field overlaps. That is not a conclusion that a competitor search means the person is not a prospect. There is no dedicated ad and page that answers a comparison, and receipt of a completed signup on the Google Ads side is also unconfirmed, so even if we run the ads it is hard to evaluate the result. Once measurement and a place to receive the visit are in place, we can judge again whether to try it small.

If the keyword is the cause, stop the keyword

If wasted terms are concentrated on one keyword, stopping that keyword is faster and more certain than excluding the terms one by one. Even if you exclude the terms, the same keyword will pick up different terms again tomorrow.

We paused the intent match on 「EC 集客」 and left the phrase match and exact match of the same term. Searches that include 「EC 集客」 can still be shown.

We also paused the intent match in the other 5 ad groups. Wasted delivery was not visible there yet, and the reason for stopping was separate. Conversions (in our case, a free signup) had not been measured even once.

Intent match delivers broadly, out to searches related to the meaning of the keyword. The wider you deliver, the more you need material that separates searches that lead to a result from searches that do not. What automated bidding uses as that material is the record of conversions, so while not a single one has been recorded, it cannot tell them apart. Until measurement is working, we decided to deliver with phrase match and exact match only, and build a baseline of which terms arrive.

For a specific term, add a negative keyword

If you want to keep the keyword and stop only a specific term, use a negative keyword. There are three things to decide.

1. At which level to exclude

Negative keywords can be set at campaign level and at ad group level.

• Campaign level: terms you do not want in any ad group. Names of other companies you have decided not to pay for, job listings, technical explanations, and similar
• Ad group level: terms that do not fit that ad group's product, and could still be in scope elsewhere

We excluded, at campaign level, other companies' names we had decided, for now, not to pay for. On the other side, 「トリミング サロン」 (pet grooming) and 「無料 掲載」 (looking for a free place to be listed), which had shown in the ad group aimed at hair salons, are excluded only in that ad group. They do not fit someone looking for customers for a hair salon, and there is no reason to stop them in the ad groups for other industries.

2. Check the other spellings

Unlike ordinary keywords, negative keywords do not extend to rephrasings of the same meaning or to similar patterns (Google Ads Help: About negative keywords).

We had excluded one other company's service name as Latin letters with no space. When we reviewed the report, the same name split by a space had 7 impressions and 1 click (¥735). There were also searches in katakana. The no-space spelling alone may not stop it, so the space-separated spelling and the katakana were excluded separately.

After you add a negative, check the spellings that actually appeared in the search terms report, and if there is a difference like the following, add it separately.

• Whether there is a space (「ウェブライダー」 and 「ウェブ ライダー」)
• Latin letters and katakana
• An abbreviation, or whether the company name is included

You do not need to line up every typo you can think of. Add the spellings that appeared in the report a few at a time, and after you add them, check whether they stopped.

3. Do not exclude a word that is too broad

If you exclude a short word such as 「無料」 ("free"), 「方法」 ("method"), or 「AI」, you also stop searches that are close to in scope. We have not excluded 「方法」 either. It includes searches such as 「集客 方法」 that could still become a customer from here.

「やり方」 ("how to"), the other way around, was excluded after we decided not to pay for research searches. When you exclude a broad word like this, the premise is that you later check the search terms report to see that searches you wanted to keep have not stopped.

What to check after you stop it

A report for a past period still shows terms that were delivered before the change. So you do not look at that and judge "it has not stopped," split the period at the day you changed it, and check the following.

• Whether the terms you stopped still have impressions after the change
• Whether impressions for the terms you wanted to keep have disappeared after the change
• Whether impressions for the whole campaign have dropped sharply

While impressions are still only in the tens, you cannot judge that the exclusion raised or lowered the click rate. It is enough to check only "whether what you wanted to stop has stopped, and what you wanted to keep is still there."

A judgment prompt to paste into ChatGPT or Gemini

Download the search terms report as a CSV, and paste the columns for search term, match type, keyword, ad group, impressions, clicks, and cost. Do not paste the account ID or personal information.

You assist with running Google Search ads.
Look at the search terms report below and judge which delivery should be stopped.

Premises:
- Product or service:
- Who you want to see the ad:
- Definition of a conversion:
- Is conversion measurement working? (yes / no / unknown):
- Do you run ads on searches for another company's name? (yes / no):
- If you do, do you have an ad and a page that answer a comparison, and a ceiling on the test budget?

Search terms report:
(paste here)

Rules:
- Split each search term into "in scope", "close, but a different intent", "another company's name", or "out of scope"
- Do not automatically treat "another company's name" as out of scope. Check the field you serve, your own policy, a page that answers a comparison, measurement of the result, and the test budget. If any of that is missing, hold
- If out-of-scope terms are concentrated on a specific keyword, consider pausing that keyword before excluding
- For each term you exclude, decide campaign level or ad group level, with a reason
- For terms you exclude, also list other spellings that appear in the report (spaces or no spaces, Latin letters and katakana)
- For a short, broad word such as 「無料」 or 「方法」, show examples of searches that would stop if you excluded it, and do not recommend the exclusion
- Do not exclude "close, but a different intent". Show how many clicks and how many signups to look at before judging
- Do not create numbers or industry averages that are not in the input

Output:
1. A classification table of the search terms
2. Keywords to consider pausing, and the reason
3. Negative keywords to add (term, level, match type, reason)
4. Terms not to exclude, and the reason
5. Items to check after the change

The AI's classification can miss because it does not know the product. In particular, look at the border between "close, but a different intent" and "out of scope" yourself at the end, and decide.

Doing this every time is a lot of work

As long as delivery continues, the search terms report keeps adding new terms. Download once a week, classify, add negatives, and check with the period split at the change date. The smaller the ad spend, the more this work tends to stop being worth the cost.

Shoryaku AI connects to Google Ads, and on the Pro plan it analyzes search terms, keywords, and ads. If there is a search term unrelated to the product, it shows it as a negative-keyword candidate, with the contents and the reason. It does not change ads automatically. A negative is reflected in Google Ads only when you check what was shown and approve it one at a time, and it can be undone later.

How to judge whether to accept a recommendation is in Should you apply every Google Ads recommendation? The criteria.

The Google Ads analysis feature can be tried for 14 days, with no card at the start.

Summary

1. In the search terms report, look at "search term" and "match type" before impressions
2. If wasted terms are concentrated on one keyword, stop the keyword
3. Until conversions are being measured, do not widen delivery with intent match
4. Stop a specific term with a negative keyword, and decide campaign level or ad group level
5. Negatives do not extend to rephrasings, so also add the other spellings that appeared in the report
6. For a broad word such as 「無料」 or 「方法」, judge after you check which searches would stop
7. For another company's name, decide after you check your own bidding policy and whether you have a place that receives a comparison

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• AI