Most Google Ads accounts we audit are wasting somewhere between 15% and 40% of their budget. Not through bad strategy or the wrong platform — through search terms nobody ever looked at.
The money doesn’t disappear all at once. It leaks slowly, across dozens of loosely related searches, in amounts small enough that no single day looks alarming. Which is exactly why it survives quarter after quarter.
This article covers where the leak comes from, how to find it in your own account this week, and how to stop it recurring.
The Difference Between Keywords and Search Terms
This distinction is the entire article, so it’s worth being precise about it.
Your keywords are what you told Google you want to appear for. Your search terms are what people actually typed when your ad showed. They are not the same list, and the gap between them is where budget goes missing.
Google matches your keywords to searches it judges to be related. That judgement has become considerably looser over the past few years. A keyword like “commercial plumber Sydney” can trigger ads for “plumbing apprenticeship”, “how to fix a tap”, or a competitor’s brand name.
Each of those clicks costs the same as a genuine one. None of them will ever become a customer.
Why It Gets Worse Over Time
A new campaign usually performs well for the first month or two. Match types are tight, the keyword list is deliberate, and Google’s learning phase is still exploring conservatively.
Then three things happen gradually.
Google broadens its matching as it accumulates data on your account. Your competitors change their bidding, shifting which auctions you win. And nobody opens the search terms report, because performance hasn’t dropped sharply enough to prompt it.
Six months later the account is spending a meaningful share of its budget on searches that were never intended, and the owner is asking why the cost per lead has crept up.
Finding the Leak
In Google Ads, go to your campaign, then Insights and Reports, then Search Terms. Set the date range to the last 30 days and sort by cost, highest first.
Read the top 50. That’s usually enough to find most of the problem.
For each one, ask a single question: would someone typing this be a plausible customer? Not “is this related to my industry” — that’s a much lower bar and the reason so much waste survives review.
| Search term category | Example | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Job seekers | “plumber jobs sydney”, “apprenticeship” | Add as negative |
| DIY intent | “how to fix”, “diy guide”, “tutorial” | Add as negative |
| Free seekers | “free”, “cheapest”, “no cost” | Add as negative unless it fits your offer |
| Wrong location | Suburbs or states you don’t service | Add as negative and check location settings |
| Competitor brands | Named competitors | Judgement call — see below |
| Adjacent services | Services you don’t offer | Add as negative |
Competitor Terms Deserve a Separate Decision
Bidding on competitor brand names is legal in Australia and sometimes worthwhile, but it’s rarely accidental spend done well.
If you’re deliberately targeting a competitor, it needs its own campaign, its own budget and a landing page that addresses the comparison directly. Someone searching a competitor by name is looking for that competitor — a generic service page won’t convert them.
If it’s happening by accident through broad match, it’s waste. Add the negatives.
Building the Negative Keyword List
Add negatives at the campaign level for anything universally irrelevant — job searches, DIY, terms in languages you don’t service. Add them at the ad group level when the term is relevant to one service but not another.
Three match types apply to negatives, and choosing wrong causes problems.
Broad negative blocks any search containing those words in any order. Powerful, and easy to overreach with. Adding “free” as a broad negative blocks “free delivery”, which might be exactly what you want to advertise.
Phrase negative blocks searches containing that phrase in order. The safest default for most terms.
Exact negative blocks only that precise search. Useful for one specific term you don’t want, without affecting variations.
Build a shared negative keyword list for anything that applies across every campaign. It saves repeating the work each time you launch something new.
What to Expect After the Clean-Up
Clicks will fall. This is the point, though it takes some nerve the first time you watch it happen.
What should rise is conversion rate, because the remaining traffic is more qualified. Cost per conversion should fall. Total conversions usually hold steady or increase, since the freed budget goes to searches that actually convert.
If clicks fall and conversions fall proportionally, you’ve cut too deep — you’ve blocked genuine traffic. Check your negatives for broad match terms that are catching more than intended.
Making It Routine
The clean-up is not a one-off task. New search terms appear every week as people phrase things differently and Google adjusts its matching.
Weekly is the right cadence for accounts spending meaningfully. Monthly is the absolute minimum. Anything less and you’re back where you started within a quarter.
It takes fifteen minutes once the initial work is done, and it’s the highest-return fifteen minutes in Google Ads account management.
Where to Start
This week: Pull the last 30 days of search terms sorted by cost. Read the top 50 and add negatives for anything a plausible customer wouldn’t type.
This month: Build a shared negative list for terms that apply to every campaign. Check your location settings while you’re there — “people in or regularly in your locations” rather than “people interested in” is usually the correct setting for a local service business.
Next 90 days: Set a weekly recurring reminder for the search terms report. Compare cost per conversion month on month rather than week on week, since weekly numbers are too noisy to read.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much budget is typically wasted?
In accounts that have never had a negative keyword review, we typically find 15% to 40% of spend going to search terms with no plausible purchase intent. Accounts reviewed regularly sit far lower.
Will adding negatives hurt my reach?
It reduces impressions, which is intended. What matters is whether qualified impressions fall. If conversions drop alongside clicks, your negatives are too broad rather than too many.
Does this apply to Performance Max campaigns?
Yes, though the controls are more limited. Performance Max supports account-level negative keyword lists and brand exclusions. The search terms visibility is poorer, which is one of the trade-offs of that campaign type.
Should I use broad match keywords at all?
Broad match can work well, but only with a solid negative keyword list and regular review underpinning it. Using broad match without either is the single most common cause of the waste described in this article.
How long before I see the difference?
Cost per conversion usually shifts within two to four weeks. Give it a full month before drawing conclusions, and avoid changing your budget during that window so the comparison stays readable.
Related Reading
- Google Ads + Shopify: How to Drive More Sales to Your Australian Store
- Landing Page Conversion Rate: How to Double Enquiries Without Increasing Ad Spend
- How to Choose a Digital Marketing Agency in Australia
Budget rarely leaks dramatically. It leaks in $8 and $12 increments across searches nobody reviewed, and it compounds over months.
HHP Design is a certified Google Partner in Sydney, with weekly search term review built into every account we manage. Get in touch to discuss your account.