How to Filter Keywords in Google Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

If you're running Google Ads, your search terms report is one of the most valuable places to spend your time—and one of the most overwhelming. Without a clear filtering process, you end up wading through hundreds of irrelevant queries, missing the high-intent terms worth bidding on, and letting wasted spend quietly drain your budget.

This guide walks you through a practical, repeatable process for Google Ads keyword filtering: how to review your search terms, separate the junk from the gold, add negatives strategically, and promote winning terms as keywords. Whether you're managing one account or twenty, these steps will help you make faster, smarter decisions without getting lost in spreadsheets.

You'll come away with a filtering workflow you can run weekly—one that keeps your campaigns lean, your budget focused, and your keyword lists growing in the right direction.

Step 1: Open Your Search Terms Report and Set the Right Date Range

Before you can filter anything, you need to be looking at the right data. Navigate to your campaign, then go to Keywords and select Search Terms. This is not the same as the Keywords tab, and that distinction matters.

Keywords are the terms you bid on. Search terms are the actual queries users typed into Google before your ad appeared. A single keyword can trigger dozens of different search terms, especially if you're using broad or phrase match. The Search Terms Report shows you what's really happening—and that's where all filtering decisions should start.

Once you're in the report, set your date range deliberately. A window of 14 to 30 days is a reasonable starting point for most accounts. It gives you enough data to spot patterns without surfacing queries that are no longer relevant to your current campaigns.

Too short a range—say, three to five days—and you risk making decisions based on noise. A single irrelevant click doesn't justify adding a negative keyword. Too long a range—six months or more—and you're mixing in data from campaigns, bids, or landing pages that may have changed significantly since then.

For lower-volume accounts where 30 days might only produce a handful of search terms, extending to 60 or 90 days is reasonable. The goal is enough data to make a confident decision, not a fixed rule about dates.

If you're managing multiple campaigns, consider filtering by campaign or ad group before you start reviewing. Mixing search terms from a branded campaign with those from a generic product campaign makes the data harder to act on. Reviewing one campaign at a time keeps your decisions focused and your negative keyword placements accurate.

One more thing worth noting: the Search Terms Report only shows queries that received at least one impression in the selected period. Google doesn't surface every query that matched your keywords, so what you see is a useful but incomplete picture. Work with what's there and review regularly to catch new patterns as they emerge.

Step 2: Apply Filters to Surface the Terms That Matter Most

A raw search terms report can contain hundreds or thousands of rows. Scrolling through all of them isn't a filtering strategy—it's a recipe for missed opportunities and decision fatigue. The goal of this step is to use Google Ads' built-in column filters to surface the terms that deserve your attention first.

Start with the highest-priority combination: high spend with zero or very few conversions. These are the terms actively draining your budget without contributing to your goals. Sort by cost descending, then look for rows where conversions are zero. These are your immediate targets for review.

A few other useful filter combinations to run through:

High impressions, zero conversions: Terms that appear frequently but never convert may indicate a relevance problem. They might not be junk outright, but they warrant a closer look at intent.

High cost, above-target CPA: If you're tracking conversions and have a target cost per acquisition, filter for terms where the CPA significantly exceeds that threshold. These may still be worth keeping, but they need scrutiny.

Low CTR terms: A very low click-through rate on a frequently-shown term can signal that users are seeing your ad but finding it irrelevant to what they searched. This is worth investigating before it continues accumulating impressions.

To apply filters in Google Ads, use the filter bar at the top of the report. You can add multiple conditions and save the resulting filter view so you can reload it in future sessions without rebuilding it from scratch. Saving your filter views is a small habit that pays off significantly when you're doing this weekly.

One common mistake is filtering by clicks alone. A term with 50 clicks and zero conversions is a much bigger problem than a term with one click and no conversion. Prioritize by cost and conversion data, not just traffic volume.

It's also worth segmenting by match type. Broad match keywords tend to trigger the widest variety of search terms, including some that are quite far from your intended targeting. If you're seeing a lot of irrelevant queries, checking which match types are responsible can help you decide whether to tighten the match type, add negatives, or both.

If you use Keywordme, these patterns are surfaced directly within the Search Terms Report. You can identify and act on high-spend, low-converting terms without exporting data or building filter logic in a separate tool—everything stays inside the Google Ads interface.

Step 3: Identify and Flag Irrelevant Search Terms for Negative Keywords

With your filters applied, you're now looking at a manageable set of terms. The next step is to go through them and decide which ones should be excluded from triggering your ads in the future. This is where you build your negative keyword strategy.

The core decision framework is straightforward: ask two questions about each term. First, would you want to pay for this click? Second, does this term match what your landing page actually delivers? If the answer to either question is no, it's a candidate for a negative keyword.

Some categories of irrelevant terms show up repeatedly across accounts and industries:

"Free" and "DIY" queries: If you're selling a paid product or service, users searching for free alternatives or how-to guides are rarely going to convert. These are common sources of wasted spend.

Informational queries: Terms starting with "how to," "what is," or "why does" often indicate someone in research mode, not buying mode. Unless your landing page is specifically designed to capture top-of-funnel traffic, these are usually worth excluding.

Job-seeker queries: Searches like "careers," "jobs," or "salary" attached to your product category signal a completely different audience than your customers.

Unrelated product names:Broad match keywords can pull in queries about products or brands that share a word with yours but serve a different market entirely.

Competitor branded terms: Whether to exclude competitor terms depends on your strategy. If you're not running a deliberate competitor campaign with tailored ad copy and landing pages, these clicks often underperform.

As you flag terms, also think about where the negative keyword should live. Campaign-level negatives block a term across every ad group within that campaign. Ad group-level negatives are more surgical—they exclude a term only within a specific ad group while allowing it to trigger ads elsewhere in the campaign.

Choosing the wrong level wastes the work. If a term is irrelevant to your entire offering, add it at the campaign level. If it's only irrelevant in a specific context—for example, a search term that makes sense for one product ad group but not another—use the ad group level.

Mark terms as you go. Don't rely on memory or plan to come back to a mental list. Select them in the interface and queue them for the next step.

Step 4: Add Negative Keywords to the Right Lists

You've identified the terms you want to exclude. Now you need to add them as negative keywords in a way that's organized, accurate, and maintainable over time.

In Google Ads, you can add negatives directly from the Search Terms Report by selecting the checkbox next to a term and using the option to add it as a negative keyword. From there, you choose the level—campaign or ad group—and the match type.

Match type for negative keywords deserves careful attention because it behaves differently from match types for positive keywords. Here's a quick breakdown:

Broad negative match: Blocks any query containing all the words in your negative keyword, in any order. This casts the widest net but carries the highest risk of accidentally blocking relevant traffic. Use it carefully.

Phrase negative match: Blocks queries that contain your negative keyword as a phrase, in that order. More precise than broad, and generally a safe default for most exclusions.

Exact negative match: Blocks only queries that exactly match the negative keyword. The most surgical option—useful when you want to exclude one specific term without affecting related queries.

For most negative keyword additions, phrase or exact match is the right choice. Broad negative match can suppress legitimate traffic if you're not careful, particularly in accounts with tightly themed ad groups.

Beyond match type, you also need to decide between campaign-specific negative keyword lists and shared negative keyword lists. Campaign-specific lists apply only to the campaign you're working in. Shared lists can be applied across multiple campaigns—which is particularly useful for agencies managing several clients with similar exclusion patterns, or for advertisers running multiple campaigns that should all exclude the same set of irrelevant terms.

If you're an agency, building and maintaining shared negative keyword lists is one of the more scalable habits you can develop. You add a term once and it applies everywhere the list is attached.

One pitfall to avoid: bulk-adding negatives without reviewing them first. It's easy to get into a rhythm of selecting and adding quickly, but a single over-broad negative keyword added at the campaign level can suppress traffic you actually want. Before finalizing a batch of negatives, scan the list one more time.

Keywordme handles this step directly inside the Search Terms Report. You can apply negatives with a single click and assign them to shared or campaign-specific lists without leaving the Google Ads interface—which removes a lot of the friction from this part of the process.

Step 5: Promote High-Intent Search Terms as New Keywords

Keyword filtering isn't only about exclusion. Some of the most valuable work you can do in the Search Terms Report is identifying terms that are already working—or showing strong intent—but aren't yet in your keyword list as explicit bids.

When a search term converts but isn't a keyword you're actively bidding on, you have limited control over how much you spend on it, which ad it triggers, and how your bids are optimized for it. Promoting it to a keyword gives you that control.

Look for search terms that have converted at or below your target CPA, or that show clear commercial intent even if conversions are low due to limited volume. These are worth adding as explicit keywords.

To add a term as a keyword, select it in the Search Terms Report and use the option to add it as a keyword. You'll choose the destination ad group and the match type. A few guidelines on match type selection here:

Exact match is the right choice for proven converters where you want precise control over spend and bidding. You're telling Google to show your ad only when someone searches for that specific term.

Phrase match works well for terms that have shown intent but where slight variations are also likely to be relevant. It gives you more reach while still maintaining reasonable control.

Before adding, check whether the term already exists as a keyword in another ad group. Duplicate keywords across ad groups create internal competition in the auction, which can drive up your own costs. If the term already exists elsewhere, consider whether it belongs in the current ad group or whether the existing placement is already appropriate.

Also think about ad copy alignment. When you add a search term as a keyword in a specific ad group, you want the ads in that group to be relevant to that term. If the fit is poor, it may be worth creating a new ad group rather than forcing the term into an existing one.

Step 6: Build a Repeatable Weekly Review Cadence

Everything covered in the previous steps is only valuable if you do it consistently. Search behavior shifts over time. New queries appear as match types expand reach. Campaigns get updated, budgets change, and seasonal patterns introduce entirely new sets of search terms. A one-time filtering session doesn't hold up for long.

A weekly review of 20 to 30 minutes is a realistic and effective cadence for most accounts. It's short enough to stay disciplined about, and frequent enough to catch new junk terms before they accumulate significant spend.

To make weekly sessions efficient, save your filter views in Google Ads after you set them up in Step 2. When you return the following week, you can reload the same filters immediately rather than rebuilding them from scratch. This alone removes several minutes of setup time from each session.

Set your date range to cover since your last review—typically the past seven days. This keeps each session focused on new data rather than re-reviewing terms you've already processed.

For agencies managing multiple client accounts, consistency across the team matters. Document the filtering criteria you use for each client so that any team member running a review applies the same standards. What counts as a junk term for one client may be a valid term for another, and those distinctions should be written down, not assumed.

Over time, track the impact of your filtering sessions. Monitor changes in average CPC, conversion rate, impression share, and overall spend efficiency after regular filtering. The improvements tend to be gradual rather than dramatic, but they compound. Accounts that are reviewed consistently tend to become progressively leaner and more focused.

Keywordme is built for exactly this kind of recurring workflow. Bulk actions, one-click decisions, and multi-account support make weekly sessions faster—so the cadence stays sustainable even when you're managing a full client roster.

Your Keyword Filtering Checklist

Consistent keyword filtering is one of the highest-leverage habits in Google Ads management. Each session builds on the last. Over time, your campaigns get tighter, your budget goes further, and your keyword lists reflect real buying intent rather than guesswork.

Here's a quick checklist to run through each session:

1. Open the Search Terms Report and set a meaningful date range—typically 14 to 30 days, or since your last review for weekly sessions.

2. Apply filters to isolate high-spend or low-performing terms. Save your filter views so you can reload them quickly next time.

3. Flag irrelevant terms for negative keywords. Use the two-question framework: would you pay for this click, and does it match your landing page?

4. Add negatives to the right list at the right match type. Prefer phrase or exact match for most additions. Use shared lists where multiple campaigns share the same exclusions.

5. Promote converting or high-intent search terms as new keywords. Choose the right match type and check for duplicates before adding.

6. Schedule your next review. Set a recurring calendar block so the cadence holds.

The process is straightforward, but doing it manually week after week inside a busy Google Ads interface adds up to a lot of time. If you want to speed things up, Keywordme lets you do all of this directly inside Google Ads—no spreadsheets, no tab-switching, just faster decisions right where you're already working.

Start your free 7-day trial and see how much time you save on your next review. After the trial, it's $12 per month per user—a straightforward cost for a tool that pays for itself quickly in recovered budget and time.