The weekly habit that saves more money than any new strategy
Broad match and close variants mean your ads show for searches you never chose. Reading the search terms report every week is still the best fix.
You chose your keywords carefully. Google still shows your ads for searches you never added — that's how broad match and close variants work. Sometimes it finds great new searches. Often it finds people looking for jobs, free versions, DIY guides or a different product entirely.
What we look for
- Job seekers: 'jobs', 'salary', 'career', 'hiring'.
- Wrong intent: 'free', 'DIY', 'how to', 'template', 'second hand' — depending on the business.
- Competitor or unrelated brand names you don't want to pay for.
- Locations you don't serve.
- Searches with clicks and spend but no conversions over a meaningful period.
One detail people miss
Negative keywords don't automatically match close variants the way normal keywords do. Excluding 'job' doesn't exclude 'jobs'. Plurals and common misspellings need to be added separately.
Organise them properly
Keep shared negative lists at account level for things that are never relevant, and campaign-level negatives to stop campaigns competing with each other — for example, keeping brand searches out of non-brand campaigns.
Ten minutes a week in the search terms report beats any clever restructure. It's boring, and it's where the money is.
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