Google Ads search terms report: a beginner's guide to finding wasted clicks

Keywords are what you told Google you wanted. Search terms are what people actually typed. The two are never the same, and the gap between them is where most of a small business's wasted clicks live. The search terms report is the one place you can see that gap, and most owners have never opened it.

Where it is

In Google Ads, open a campaign, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. You can look at one campaign, one ad group, or the whole account. Set the date range to the longest period you have been running; one week hides patterns that a year makes obvious.

Two things to know before you read it. Google only lists terms that enough people searched; rarer ones are grouped into a line called "Other search terms", which can be a large share of your clicks and which you cannot see. And the report shows the term that triggered your ad, not the keyword, so the same keyword will appear against dozens of different terms.

How to read it

Sort by cost, highest first. Then go line by line and ask one question of each: could the person who typed this have become a customer?

You will find four kinds of term.

Terms you want. "Emergency plumber near me", "dentist that takes new patients". These are why you advertise. Note the good ones; if any are not already keywords, add them as exact match so you bid on them directly.

Terms that cannot be customers. Jobs, salary, training, free, DIY, how to, reviews of a competitor, a town you do not serve. Nobody typing these is about to book. Each one becomes a negative keyword.

Terms that are close but wrong. "Commercial roofing" when you only do homes; "cheap" when you are not. These are judgement calls. If the term spent money over a long period and produced nothing, make it a negative.

Terms you cannot explain. Searches that have nothing to do with your business at all. These usually trace back to broad match keywords, and the fix is in the keyword, not the negative list.

Turning terms into negatives

Select the terms you want to exclude and choose Add as negative keyword. You can add them to the ad group, the campaign, or a shared negative list that applies across campaigns. For terms that are wrong everywhere, such as job seekers, use a shared list. For terms that are only wrong in one campaign, keep them local.

When several bad terms share one word, add the word rather than the phrases. "Plumber jobs", "plumbing jobs near me" and "apprentice plumber jobs" are all handled by one negative: jobs. The negative keywords guide covers match types for negatives, which work differently from match types for keywords.

What good looks like

After a few weeks of this, two things change. The share of spend going on terms you would be happy to pay for rises, visibly, week on week. And the "Other search terms" line shrinks as a proportion, because the ad is being triggered by tighter, more specific searches.

The report never empties. New terms appear every week as people search in new ways, as Google adjusts what it matches, and as competitors change what they bid on. Reading it is a weekly job for as long as the ads run, which is why it is the first thing any management service or tool does on a Monday.

A worked example

A landscaper in Tulsa runs one campaign with the keyword "landscaping" on phrase match. The search terms report for the last six months, sorted by cost, shows at the top: "landscaping jobs" ($410), "landscaping ideas" ($290), "landscaping companies near me" ($260), "free landscaping design" ($140), "landscaping Tulsa" ($130).

One of those five is a customer. Three negatives, "jobs", "ideas" and "free", would have kept $840 of the $1,230 for the searches that mattered. That is the exercise, and it takes ten minutes.

The free check below is the shortcut: paste your website, see what would be fixed first, and when the account is connected, the search terms that spent without an enquiry are found and priced every week without anyone opening the report.