Search Terms and Negatives
The search terms report is the #1 optimization lever in a Google Ads account. It shows what people actually typed, versus the keywords you bid on. In B2B, the gap between those two is where most budget leaks.
The weekly ritual (non-negotiable)
Run search_terms_report.py every week. For each campaign:
- Find waste. Filter for terms with spend and no conversions (
--no-conversions --min-clicks 3). Add the irrelevant ones as negatives. - Find winners. Terms converting well that aren't yet keywords -> add them as Exact or Phrase keywords in the right ad group.
- Find intent drift. Broad/phrase matching pulling in adjacent-but-wrong meaning -> tighten match type or add negatives.
Skipping a week in B2B can mean hundreds of dollars on "salary", "free", and job-seeker traffic.
What to negative out
- Universal junk: free, cheap, jobs, salary, hiring, career, intern, student, course, tutorial, training, certification, pdf, reddit, wiki, crack, torrent.
- Research-not-buying: "what is", "how to" (unless you intentionally run problem-aware), "examples", "meaning", "definition".
- Wrong product: words you share with an unrelated category. Watch your own report - these are specific to you.
- Brand-as-negative: add your brand terms as negatives in non-brand campaigns so brand traffic routes to the brand campaign only.
Negative match types matter
- Negative broad "free" blocks any query containing "free" in any order - the default workhorse.
- Negative phrase blocks the phrase in order.
- Negative exact blocks only that exact query - use when a term is valid in one context but not another. Careful: negative broad with multiple words requires all words present (any order), not any one of them. "free trial" as negative broad won't block "free" alone.
Shared lists
Build a shared negative keyword list for universal junk and apply it to all non-brand Search campaigns. Maintain it in one place. Keep campaign-specific negatives local.
Don't over-negative
Every negative you add narrows reach. In low-volume B2B that compounds fast. Negative the clearly-wrong, not the merely-uncertain. If a term might convert, let it run a little longer before cutting.
By Ivan Falco - Frontal