Your Keywords Are Not What People Type - SF Digital Studios Blog

Most business owners think they choose what they pay for in Google Ads.

You pick your keywords. You set your budget. Google shows your ad to people searching those words. Simple.

It’s not simple. Your keywords are closer to a suggestion than an instruction.

There’s one report inside your account that shows the real words people typed before they clicked your ad and spent your money. Most owners have never opened it.

When they finally do, the reaction is nearly always the same. They find they’ve been paying for things they’d never have chosen.

Industry analysis suggests that in most accounts, somewhere between 15 and 30 per cent of search term spend goes to queries that are clearly irrelevant to the business. That’s real money, and it’s recoverable.

This is the first report we open on any account we take over. We’ve never opened one and found nothing.

What The Search Terms Report Actually Shows

The search terms report lists the actual searches that triggered your ads.

Not your keywords. The real thing somebody typed into Google.

Here’s the difference in one line. A keyword is what you bid on. A search term is what a person searched.

Say you’re a plumber and you bid on the keyword “emergency plumber”. That’s your keyword.

The search terms report might show you paid for “emergency plumber salary”, “how to become an emergency plumber” and “emergency plumber jobs near me”.

Three clicks. Three people who will never hire you. Your money.

That gap is not a fault in your account. It’s how the system is built.

Why The Gap Exists At All

Match types are the reason.

When you add a keyword, you also choose how loosely Google is allowed to interpret it.

Exact match keeps things tight. Your ad shows for that search and very close variants of it.

Phrase match is looser. Your ad shows when the meaning of your keyword sits inside the search, with words either side.

Broad match is the loosest. Google decides which searches are close enough in meaning.

It weighs your landing page, your other keywords and the person’s recent activity when it decides.

Broad match is the default when you add a keyword without brackets or quotation marks. Plenty of accounts are running it without anyone having chosen it.

None of that is Google being sneaky. Loose matching lets you reach searches you’d never have thought to write down.

Some of those are gold.

But it also means the distance between what you asked for and what you bought can be enormous. The report is the only place that distance is visible.

Where To Find It

The report is buried, which is why so few people know it exists.

In your Google Ads account, go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms.

Set the date range to the last 30 days. That gives you enough data to spot patterns without drowning in rows.

That’s it. Two levels down a menu, and it changes how you see your account.

One extra step worth taking. Add the Keyword column from the column picker.

It shows which of your keywords triggered each search. That turns a list of searches into a diagnosis of which keyword is misbehaving.

Why This One Report Matters More Than The Rest

Google Ads gives you dozens of reports. Most tell you how your choices performed.

This one tells you what your choices actually bought.

Every other number in the account sits downstream of it. Your cost per lead, your conversion rate, your quality score. All of them are shaped by which searches you paid for.

If a third of your spend went to people looking for jobs, your cost per lead was never going to look good. No amount of bid tweaking fixes that.

Fix the searches first. Everything downstream improves on its own.

That’s why we open it before anything else. It isn’t the most sophisticated report in the account. It’s the one that explains all the others.

Sort By Cost, Not By Clicks

Here’s the mistake nearly everyone makes on a first look, and no guide warns you about it.

They sort the report by clicks or by impressions and look at the busiest terms.

Sort by cost instead. Click the Cost column so the most expensive term sits at the top.

You’re not hunting for popular searches. You’re hunting for expensive ones.

A term with 400 clicks and no conversions matters. A term with 12 clicks that ate £180 matters more.

Money first, always. The busiest term in your account might be costing you 40p a click and doing no harm at all.

The Column That Answers The Question

Once sorted by cost, look at Cost next to Conversions.

Any row with real spend and zero conversions is the question you need to answer.

That doesn’t automatically make it bad. Some searches genuinely need several visits before someone buys. Somebody researching on a Tuesday might convert on a Friday under a different search.

But every one of them has to justify itself. If you can’t explain why you’re paying for that search, you shouldn’t be paying for it.

The One Question That Does All The Work

This is the whole method, and it needs no technical knowledge at all.

Ask one thing of each row: would I have chosen to pay for that?

You know your own business. You’ll know the answer instantly, without looking anything up.

Whatever you answer no to is your negative keyword list.

That’s the test every other guide leaves out. Google’s own documentation tells you that you can add negatives, and never tells you when a term deserves one.

It works because it uses the only expertise that matters here, which is yours.

Nobody understands your customers better than you do.

You don’t need a threshold or a formula. You need to look at what you bought and say whether you’d have bought it.

What To Actually Do With A Bad Search Term

Finding waste is half the job. Blocking it is the other half.

Tick the box beside the term. Choose Add as negative keyword.

Then make one decision that most people get wrong.

Campaign Level Or Account Level

This is the difference between a tidy account and one that gets permanently better.

A campaign negative applies to that campaign only. Use it for something irrelevant here but fine elsewhere. A competitor’s product you don’t stock. A service you sell under a different campaign.

An account negative list applies everywhere, including campaigns you haven’t built yet. Use it for anything you never want, in any campaign, ever.

Get this wrong, and you’ll block the same rubbish over and over, campaign by campaign, forever.

Every new campaign starts from scratch and re-learns the same lessons with your money.

Get it right and the work compounds. A year in, your account list is doing most of the filtering before you even look.

Most small accounts should have one account-level negative list, and should be adding to it monthly. Very few do.

Block Patterns, Not Single Searches

Don’t just block “free quote software”. Notice that you’re paying for a whole family of searches, and block the pattern.

The words that waste money in almost every account are similar. Free. Cheap. DIY. Jobs. Careers. Salary. Courses. Training. Templates. How to. Meaning. Definition.

Those are people researching, studying or job hunting. They’re not buying.

One negative on a repeated word beats fifty negatives on individual searches. It also protects you against searches nobody has typed yet, which is the part people miss. You aren’t just cleaning up the past, you’re pre-blocking the future.

Negative Match Types, Briefly

Negatives have match types too, and they behave differently from normal keywords.

A negative broad blocks any search containing all your words, in any order. Adding “free” blocks “free delivery” as well as “free trial”.

A negative phrase blocks searches containing your exact phrase in that order.

A negative exact blocks only that precise search.

Most of the time you want negative phrase, or negative broad on single words. Negative exact is for surgical cases.

One caution worth taking seriously. A broad negative on “free” will block “free delivery”, “free quote” and “free consultation”. If free delivery is your strongest selling point, you’ve just switched off your best searches. Read what you’re about to block before you block it.

The Half Everyone Forgets

The search terms report isn’t only for cutting. That’s where four of the five top-ranking guides stop, and it’s only half the value.

Some of those searches converted. Those are gold.

When a search term brings you real enquiries, promote it. Add it as its own exact match keyword.

Now you control the bid on it directly, rather than hoping Google matches it again. You can write an ad that speaks to exactly that search. You can send it to a page built for it.

You’ll often find phrasing you’d never have written yourself. Customers describe your service in words you don’t use internally. The report hands you their vocabulary for free.

This is how accounts get better rather than just cheaper. You cut the waste, and you back the winners, from the same report, on the same afternoon.

The Honest Caveat Nobody Mentions

Google does not show you every search term.

Searches made by very few people are withheld for privacy reasons. You’ll see a row labelled “other search terms” carrying the aggregate instead.

In practice, you’ll see the terms behind most of your spend. You won’t see all of them.

Anyone who tells you the report is complete is wrong. Work with the majority you can see, and accept there’s a tail you cannot.

Check the size of that other search terms row occasionally.

If it’s carrying a large share of your spend, your keywords are probably too broad. You’re buying a lot of thin, one-off searches.

It’s still the most useful report in the account by a wide margin.

What About Performance Max And Shopping

Performance Max doesn’t give you the full search terms list. You get search category themes instead, which are broader groupings rather than the actual queries.

That’s less useful, and there’s no way round it.

Two things still work. Your account-level negative keyword list applies to Performance Max, so the patterns you block there are still protecting you. And the themes still tell you roughly where the money is going, even if the detail is missing.

For Shopping campaigns, you do get real search terms, and they’re worth reviewing on the same rhythm as Search.

How Often To Look

For most small accounts, weekly.

New wasteful searches appear constantly. Search behaviour shifts. Google’s matching changes. A clear-out in January does nothing for you in June.

Treating negatives as a one-time purge is the biggest mistake we see. It’s maintenance, not a project.

If weekly isn’t realistic, monthly is the floor. Put it in the calendar and treat it like checking your bank statement.

Ten minutes a week beats three hours once a year.

The weekly habit catches new waste while it’s still small, before it’s spent a month quietly draining the budget.

Accounts spending several hundred pounds a day should look every two or three days, because waste accumulates faster than the review cycle.

A Worked Example

Say you run a domestic electrician business in Luton, spending £1,500 a month.

You open the report, set 30 days, and sort by cost. The top ten rows might look something like this.

Two are “electrician near me” variants that converted. Good. Leave them, and consider promoting them to exact match keywords so you control the bid.

Three are “electrician jobs Luton”, “electrician apprenticeship” and “electrician courses”. That’s £140 gone on people looking for work or training. All three go on the account negative list, and you block the pattern rather than the individual searches: jobs, apprenticeship, courses, training, salary.

Two are “how to rewire a socket” and “electrical regulations 2026”. £60 on people doing it themselves or reading up. Block “how to”, and consider whether DIY-intent words belong on the account list too.

One is “emergency electrician Milton Keynes”, outside your area. £45. That’s a location problem rather than a keyword problem, so check your location settings rather than just blocking the town.

One is a competitor’s business name. £30. Leave it or block it, depending on whether you want to compete on their brand.

The last is “cheap electrician”. £25, no conversions. Whether that goes depends on your positioning, and only you can answer it.

Ten rows, about twenty minutes, and roughly £275 a month redirected. That’s £3,300 a year without changing your budget by a penny.

Those figures are illustrative, but the shape of that list is what real accounts look like.

The Mistakes We See Most

Sorting by clicks. The most common one. Expensive terms hide in the middle of a click-sorted list.

Blocking too aggressively. Negatives are easy to add and easy to forget.

Blocking “cheap” when you actually are the affordable option costs you real customers.

Every negative should survive one question: could this word ever appear in a search from someone who’d buy?

Only ever cutting. Half the value is in promoting converters, and most people never do it.

Doing it once. A single clear-out feels productive and achieves very little six months later.

Ignoring the level. Campaign negatives that should have been account negatives means doing the same work forever.

Not checking what a negative blocks. Adding a broad negative without thinking through what else contains that word is how people accidentally switch off their best-performing searches.

Should You Bid On Your Own Brand Name

This one comes up in every search terms report, so it’s worth settling.

You’ll see your own business name in the list. People searched for you directly and clicked a paid ad to get there.

It feels like paying for a customer you already had.

Sometimes it is. If nobody else advertises on your name, and you rank first organically, brand clicks can be close to money for nothing.

Often it isn’t. If a competitor bids on your name, and you don’t, they sit above you on your own brand search.

The test is simple. Search your business name on Google, on a phone, logged out.

If somebody else’s ad is sitting above your listing, keep bidding. If the page is clean, try pausing brand for two weeks and watch what happens to your enquiries.

Brand clicks are usually your cheapest in the account, so the cost of being wrong is small either way.

What Good Actually Looks Like

Nobody tells you when to stop, so here’s a rough guide.

A healthy small account has waste, and that’s fine. You’re never getting to zero.

If under 10 per cent of your spend is going to searches you’d reject, you’re in good shape. Look monthly and move on.

Between 10 and 25 per cent is normal for an account nobody has cleaned recently. Weekly reviews will bring it down within a couple of months.

Above 25 per cent means something structural is wrong. Usually broad match keywords with no negative list behind them.

At that point, the fix isn’t more negatives. It’s tightening your match types and building the account list properly.

How This Connects To What You Pay Per Click

There’s a knock-on effect most owners never see.

Google scores how relevant your ad is to each search. That score feeds into what you pay and where you sit.

Irrelevant searches drag that score down.

When someone searches for a job and lands on your sales page, they bounce. Google notices.

So blocking waste doesn’t just save the money on those clicks. It slowly improves the price you pay on the good ones.

That’s the compounding bit. It’s also why accounts that get cleaned regularly tend to get cheaper over time, not just tidier.

Filtering, When The List Gets Long

Bigger accounts produce hundreds of rows. Scrolling stops working.

Use the filter button at the top of the report.

The most useful filter is two conditions together: cost above a threshold, and conversions equal to zero.

Set the cost threshold at whatever a wasted click really costs you. For most small accounts that’s around £20 over 30 days.

That single filter turns a thousand rows into the twenty that matter.

You can also export the whole thing to a spreadsheet from the download icon. Useful if you want to sort, tag and work through it properly rather than in the browser.

The Waste Looks Different In Every Trade

The pattern of what you’re accidentally buying changes with what you sell.

Trades and home services get flooded with job hunters and DIY. Searches with jobs, apprenticeship, courses, salary, and how to do it yourself.

Professional services get students and researchers. Definitions, templates, examples, meaning, and free versions of the thing you charge for.

Ecommerce gets other people’s products. Competitor brand names, model numbers you don’t stock, and reviews of things you don’t sell.

Anything with a licence or qualification attached gets the training market. Accountants, electricians, gas engineers, driving instructors. Half the searches are people wanting to become one.

Spend two minutes thinking about who else might type words that look like your customers’ words. That list is usually your first ten negatives, before you’ve even opened the report.

When The Report Looks Empty

Sometimes you open it, and there’s almost nothing there. Here’s why, in order of likelihood.

Your date range is too short. A new campaign with modest spend might produce a handful of rows in a week. Widen it to 30 or 90 days.

You’re looking at the wrong level. If you’ve clicked into a single ad group, you’ll only see that ad group’s searches. Step up to the campaign or the account.

Your spend is genuinely small. An account doing £10 a day generates few clicks, and few clicks means few search terms. There’s nothing to fix; you just need more data.

Your keywords are all exact match. That’s not a fault. Exact match produces far fewer stray searches, which is rather the point.

You’re on Performance Max. As covered above, you get themes rather than terms.

And occasionally, the report is just slow. Search terms data can lag the rest of your account by a day or two.

If none of those explains it, check the campaign is actually serving. A paused campaign or one that’s out of budget produces no searches because it produced no clicks.

Your Ten Minute Job

Open your search terms report.

Set the date range to the last 30 days. Sort by cost, highest first.

Look at the top ten rows. Ask one question of each: would I have chosen to pay for that?

Everything you answer no to becomes a negative keyword. Decide whether each one belongs on the campaign or on your account list.

Then look for the ones that converted, and add those as exact match keywords.

Most people who do this find something in the first five rows.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the search terms report in Google Ads?

It’s a report showing the actual words people typed into Google before your ad appeared. Your keywords are what you bid on. Search terms are what people really searched. The two are often very different.

What is the difference between keywords and search terms?

A keyword is the phrase you choose to bid on. A search term is the phrase a real person typed. On exact match, they’re usually close. On broad and phrase match, Google decides what counts as close enough, and its definition is wider than yours.

How do I add negative keywords from the search terms report?

Tick the box beside the term and choose Add as negative keyword. Then decide the level. One-off irrelevance goes on the campaign. A pattern you never want goes on your account negative keyword list so it applies to every campaign, now and in future.

Why can’t I see all my search terms?

Google withholds terms that very few people searched, to protect user privacy. You’ll normally see the terms behind most of your spend, but never every single one. The withheld ones appear as an aggregated “other search terms” row.

How often should I check the search terms report?

Weekly for most small accounts, and monthly at the absolute minimum. New wasteful searches appear all the time, so one clear-out is never enough. Ten minutes a week is more valuable than a long session once a year.

Will adding negative keywords reduce my traffic?

Yes, and that’s the point. You’re removing clicks that were never going to become customers. Your click volume drops, and your cost per enquiry usually improves.

Can I use the search terms report on Performance Max?

Only partly. Performance Max gives you search category themes rather than the full term list you get on Search campaigns. Your account-level negatives still apply to it, so the patterns you block are still doing work.

How many negative keywords should I have?

There’s no right number. A healthy small account usually has a few dozen well-chosen account-level negatives blocking patterns, rather than hundreds blocking individual searches. If your list is enormous and still growing every week, you’re blocking searches instead of patterns.

Does the report show impressions I didn’t pay for?

Yes. Terms can appear with impressions and no clicks. Those are worth a glance, because they show what Google thinks you’re relevant for, but they cost nothing so they aren’t urgent.

Start With The Money

The search terms report is the closest thing Google Ads gives you to an itemised receipt.

Most owners never ask for the receipt. They look at the total, decide the whole thing is expensive, and either cut the budget or give up.

Open the report instead. Sort by cost. Ask what you actually bought.

We’ve been running Google Ads for small businesses for almost two decades, and this remains the fastest way to find money in an account. Not a clever bidding trick. Not a new campaign type. Just reading what you paid for and deciding whether you’d have chosen it.

Ten minutes tonight will tell you more about your account than a month of guessing.

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