The 30-second version
Every Google Ads account leaks. Broad and phrase match keywords pull in searches you never intended: job hunters, DIYers, people two counties away, people wanting a service you don’t offer. The search terms report shows you every one of those searches, and the negative keyword is the plug. Twenty minutes a week reviewing that report and adding negatives to tiered lists is the highest-return maintenance work in paid search, because every junk search you block redirects that money to real searches permanently. Most accounts we audit have never done it once.
The routine, operationalized
Same day every week, twenty minutes, calendar block. Open the search terms report, set the date range to the last seven days, and sort by cost. Read every query that spent real money and ask one question per line: would I want this person calling me?
If yes, leave it, and if it converts, consider promoting it to its own keyword. If no, decide which word made it junk and add that word as a negative at the right level. That’s the whole job. No dashboards, no strategy sessions, just reading what real people actually typed and drawing a line through the ones you never want to pay for again. The first few sessions run long because you’re draining a swamp. By week six you’re skimming.
The three junk categories
Nearly every wasted click falls into one of three buckets, and naming them makes the review faster.
Never-buyers. People who will not pay you no matter what: “jobs,” “careers,” “salary,” “training,” “how to,” “DIY,” “free.” A remodeling contractor’s ads soaking up searches for “remodeling jobs hiring” is pure loss, every click, forever, until someone adds four negatives.
Wrong-service. Adjacent searches you don’t serve: the roofer who doesn’t do flat commercial roofs, the lawyer who doesn’t take criminal cases, the cleaner who doesn’t do post-construction. This is the most expensive category because the queries look plausible and often convert into leads you have to turn away, which costs you the click and the phone time.
Wrong-place. Searches naming cities, neighborhoods, or states you don’t serve. Location settings help but don’t catch everything, especially query text that names the wrong town. Geography words make clean, safe negatives.
Tiered lists: account, campaign, ad group
Negatives live at three levels, and putting them at the wrong level causes half the mess.
Account-wide, applied through a shared list attached to everything: the never-buyers. No campaign in your account wants “salary” or “free.” Block them once, everywhere.
Campaign-level: wrong-service and wrong-place terms that are junk for this campaign but not universally. “Commercial” is a negative in your residential campaign and a keyword in your commercial one.
Ad group level: traffic steering. If you run separate ad groups for “water heater repair” and “water heater installation,” negating “installation” in the repair group forces each search to the ad and landing page built for it. This level is less about blocking waste and more about raising relevance.
Shared lists: build once, apply everywhere
Google Ads lets you create shared negative keyword lists in the shared library and attach them to any campaign. Build at least two: a universal junk list (never-buyers, geography you’ll never serve, competitor names if you choose not to bid on them) and per-theme lists where your account structure calls for them. When you launch a new campaign, attach the lists and it starts life with months of accumulated filtering already applied. Without shared lists, every new campaign relearns every lesson at full price.
The compounding effect
Here’s why this habit outperforms almost any other twenty minutes you can spend on the account. A negative keyword is not a one-time saving. The block applies to every future auction, forever. Add a negative this week and you’ve redirected that slice of spend to real searches next week, next month, and next year. Do it weekly and the redirections stack: the account’s junk percentage ratchets down while lead volume from the same budget ratchets up.
It’s also the fastest tell of whether an account is actually being managed. The search terms report is the first place we look in an audit, right alongside the five leaks we find in contractor accounts, and “no negatives added in 90 days” is the most common finding. If someone charges you to manage your account, this report is where their fingerprints should be. It’s standing weekly work inside our own PPC management, because it never stops paying.
Common questions
Can’t Google’s automation just handle this? No. Google’s systems optimize toward clicks and conversions as they measure them; they have no idea you don’t do commercial roofs or serve the next county over. Only you know what junk looks like for your business, and that knowledge enters the account exclusively through negatives.
How do match types work for negatives? Differently than for keywords: negatives don’t expand to close variants. A broad negative “free” blocks queries containing that word; phrase and exact negatives are stricter about order and completeness. When in doubt, use phrase match for multi-word negatives and broad for single junk words.
Can I add too many negatives? You can, usually by negating a whole category in anger after one bad lead. Check the search terms report before adding anything sweeping, and review your lists quarterly for negatives blocking services you’ve since added.
What if the junk clicks are cheap? Cheap junk is still compounding junk. The twenty minutes already happened; adding the negative takes ten seconds. Block it.