The standard way to find wasted Google Ads spend is a rule: any search term with five or more clicks and no conversions is a candidate negative keyword. The rule is sound, and our own free checker uses it.
It also misses a whole kind of waste. In our own Google Ads account in September 2026, that kind accounted for more than half of the spend on search terms, and the rule would never have flagged any of it.
Keywords, search terms and negative keywords
Three terms are worth separating first.
- Keywords are what the account bids on.
- Search terms are what people actually typed before the ad appeared. With phrase match and broad match, one keyword can show ads for hundreds of different searches.
- Negative keywords tell Google not to show the ads for a search.
The search terms report, under Insights and reports → Search terms, lists the searches that triggered the ads, with clicks, cost and conversions for each. It is where negative keywords come from.
The usual rule, and why it works
Sort the report by cost, and look for terms with enough clicks to judge and no conversions. Five clicks is a common threshold. A term that has taken five clicks without a single enquiry is a reasonable candidate to exclude, after checking it is not one of the account's own core keywords.
The rule works well for searches that repeat. A term people search every day collects clicks quickly, and five clicks with nothing to show for them says something.
Our free search terms checker applies exactly this rule. Paste in the exported report and it lists every term over the threshold, ready to copy as negative keywords. It runs in the browser and sends nothing anywhere.
What the rule misses: searches for another company
In September 2026 we read the search terms in Mmedia's own advertising account. Of the 13 search terms that had spent money over the previous 30 days, 8 were the names of other agencies: people looking for a specific company they already knew.
Together those eight accounted for more than half of the spend on search terms over that period. Each had taken only one or two clicks.
A five-click rule would never have flagged them, however long they kept running. Each name is searched rarely, so no single one reaches the threshold, but there are many names and they add up. The count the rule depends on stays low by the nature of the search.
Someone searching for a company by name is looking for that company. They very rarely enquire with a different one. All eight are now negative keywords in exact match.
Read search terms by intent, not only by count
The fix is to look at what each search is for, as well as how many clicks it took. Searches tend to fall into a handful of kinds:
- looking for a service now;
- comparing prices or options;
- aware of a problem but not yet looking for help;
- wanting to do it themselves, or to learn how;
- looking for a tool, a course, a job or a login page;
- looking for a specific company by name.
Searches of the last two kinds can be excluded on sight, often after a single click, because the intent is clear from the words themselves. Terms such as "jobs", "salary", "course" and "login" are common examples. Some depend on the business: "free" or "how to" are worth excluding for some services and worth keeping for others.
The middle kinds need more care. Someone comparing prices may well become a customer. Someone aware of a problem may be a customer in a month. These are the searches where the click threshold is the right tool.
Before adding a negative keyword
A negative keyword that is too broad blocks good searches along with bad ones. A few checks prevent that:
- Check it against the account's own keywords. A negative that matches a keyword the account is deliberately buying switches that keyword off.
- Check it against past conversions. If a search has produced enquiries before, excluding it removes them too.
- Use exact match for company names. A company name added as exact match blocks that search only. Added as broad match, a word that is part of a name can block searches that have nothing to do with that company.
- Add the variants. Google's help page About negative keywords is clear that negative keywords do not match close variants. Plurals, misspellings and reordered words each need their own entry.
- Put company names on the account-level list. Google Ads supports account-level negative keywords, so the exclusion still applies when a new campaign starts.
How this runs at Mmedia
In the accounts we run, search terms are read every day.
- Terms that match a fixed list of words that are wrong for any business, such as jobs, salaries and courses, are excluded automatically, inside the boundaries the client has approved.
- Judgements about intent, such as another company's name, a platform's own tools or a search with no commercial value, are proposed and wait for approval.
- Company-name negatives go on the account-level list, and every one waits for approval. Before it is written, it is checked against the account's own keywords and its conversions over the last 90 days, and a conflict with either holds it back.
The September finding changed how our own system reads search terms. The click threshold is still used for the searches it suits, and intent is now read alongside it for the searches it cannot see.
To run the threshold check on an existing account, the search terms checker is free. For a fuller read of the last 30 days, including search terms, match types and conversion tracking, there is the free Google Ads account audit. How we run accounts day to day is on the Google Ads management page.