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What is in your ad account's search terms report, and who is reading it?

The search terms report is the most honest document in your marketing. It is the list of what people actually typed before they clicked your ad and cost you money. Not the keywords someone chose. The searches that actually happened. Fifteen minutes.

Open it

  1. Sign in to Google Ads with your own login. Campaigns, then Keywords, then Search terms. Set the range to the last thirty days.
  2. Sort by cost, highest first.
  3. Read the first two pages slowly. Say each search out loud as if a customer had said it to you on the phone.

Sort them

  1. Mark each search one of three ways.A job you want.A job you do not want: the wrong service, the wrong town, a brand you do not carry, someone looking for free, someone looking for a how-to.Cannot tell.
  2. Add up the cost of the second group. That is what the account spent last month on searches you would have refused if anyone had asked you.

Check whether anyone is reading it

  1. Open the negative keyword list. Same section. It is the list of searches the account has been told never to bid on.
  2. Look at when it was last changed. If the account has been running for a year and the negative list has twelve entries from the week it launched, nobody has read the search terms report since.

What it means if

The second group is small and the negative list is long and recent. The account is being worked weekly. This is what good looks like.

The second group is large and the negative list is short or old. The account is on autopilot. The fix costs nothing: every wasted search you found goes on the negative list, and someone repeats this exercise every week. Ask whoever runs the account what they added last week. It is the one question that cannot be answered with a screenshot.

Most searches are "cannot tell." The campaign is set to match too broadly and is buying searches only loosely related to what you do. That is a structural fix, not a weekly one.

The one thing to take from this

Your ad account is mostly defined by what it refuses to bid on. Read the search terms once and you will know what it has been saying yes to on your behalf, and whether anyone has been saying no.

Where the ad money goes, and what is removed first