How to Optimize Your Google Ads Search Terms Report (Step-by-Step)

The Search Terms Report is one of the few places in Google Ads where you see exactly what people typed before your ad showed up. Working through it properly is how you catch wasted spend and find new keyword opportunities at the same time. This guide walks through a repeatable process for google ads search terms report optimization, from pulling the right view to setting a review cadence you'll actually stick to. You'll need an active Google Ads account with some campaign history, ideally a few hundred clicks, so there's enough data to spot real patterns instead of noise.

Step 1: Pull Up the Search Terms Report and Set the Right View

As of 2026, you can typically find the report under Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms, or through the Search keywords page and its Search terms tab. Google shuffles its Ads interface often enough that this path may look slightly different by the time you read this, so if you can't find it where expected, search "search terms" in the Google Ads help panel or use the account's built-in search bar at the top of the screen.

Once you're in the report, set your date range before you do anything else. A window of 30 to 90 days gives most accounts enough volume for the patterns to mean something. If you're working with a low-spend campaign, stretch the range further back, otherwise you'll end up making decisions off a handful of clicks that could just be noise.

Next, customize your columns. The default view rarely shows everything you need for a real decision. At minimum, add:

• Cost, so you can see where budget is actually landing
• Conversions and conversion rate, to separate terms that spend money from terms that make money
• CTR, which helps flag terms with a relevance mismatch even before conversion data comes in
• Any visible Quality Score component columns, if you want a rough read on ad relevance for a given term's matched keyword

Getting this view set up properly takes a few minutes, but it's worth saving as a custom report or view if Google Ads gives you that option in your account, so you're not rebuilding it every time you sit down to review.

Step 2: Sort and Segment to Find Patterns Fast

With the right columns in place, sort by cost descending. This tells you where your budget is actually going, which is often not where you assume it's going. High-cost, low-conversion terms near the top of that list are your first candidates for action.

Then flip it and sort by conversions ascending while filtering for a reasonable spend threshold. This surfaces search terms burning budget with zero return, which is usually the fastest win in any review.

If you're managing more than one campaign or ad group, segment the report accordingly instead of reviewing everything in one aggregated list. A term that looks fine in the blended view might be draining one specific ad group while performing well in another. Segmenting by campaign or ad group keeps that kind of pattern from getting buried.

This is also the step where you want to keep a clear line between search terms and keywords. The search term is what someone actually typed into Google. The keyword is what you're bidding on, which triggered the ad for that query. When you look at a row in this report, you're seeing a search term matched to one of your keywords, and the two won't always align well. A broad match keyword for "project management software" might be pulling in search terms like "free project management software" or "project management software for construction," and those mismatches are exactly what this step is designed to expose.

Step 3: Flag Irrelevant and Junk Search Terms

Once you've got your high-cost and zero-conversion terms in view, start scanning for the actual junk. Look for three signals: terms with meaningful spend but no conversions, terms with intent that doesn't match your campaign (informational queries like "how to" showing up on a transactional campaign), and terms for products or services you simply don't offer.

A common mistake here is overreacting to a single bad term by adding an overly broad negative keyword that ends up blocking legitimate traffic too. Say you spot the term "free crm software" costing you clicks with no conversions on a paid CRM campaign. Adding "free" as a broad negative might feel satisfying, but it could also block searches like "free trial crm software," which is a phrase you probably want to win. Before committing to a negative, check how many other search terms in your account contain that word or phrase, and whether any of them are actually converting.

This scanning step is usually the slowest part of the process, especially in accounts with thousands of search term rows. Doing it in a spreadsheet means exporting, filtering, flagging, and then going back into Google Ads to apply changes, which adds friction every single review cycle. This is where Keywordme's in-report view helps: it sits directly inside the Search Terms Report in your browser, so you can scan and flag junk terms without exporting anything first. For agencies and freelancers working through long lists across multiple accounts, that alone cuts a meaningful chunk of time out of the manual review.

Whatever method you use, the goal of this step is just to build a clean list of terms you're confident are irrelevant, not to take action yet. Save the aggressive judgment calls for the next step, once you've decided the correct level and match type for each negative.

Step 4: Add Negative Keywords at the Correct Level

Once you've got your flagged list, decide where each negative keyword actually belongs. Google Ads gives you three levels to choose from:

1. Ad group level, for a term that's only irrelevant to one specific ad group but might still be fine elsewhere in the campaign
2. Campaign level, for a term that's irrelevant across every ad group in that campaign
3. Shared negative keyword list, for terms you want excluded across multiple campaigns or the entire account

Getting the level wrong is one of the most common negative-keyword mistakes. Adding a negative at the campaign level when it only applies to one ad group can quietly suppress traffic you actually wanted in a different part of the same campaign.

Match type matters just as much as level. Negative keywords come in the same three match types as positive keywords, broad, phrase, and exact, but they behave differently in each direction. An exact negative match blocks only that specific search term, nothing more. A phrase negative blocks that phrase and close variations containing it in the same order. A broad negative can block any search term containing all the words in your negative, in any order, which is the version most likely to cut off traffic you didn't intend to lose. When in doubt, start narrower with phrase or exact negatives and widen only if you see the same junk pattern recurring across many terms.

This is also a step where Keywordme removes friction: it lets you build and apply negative keyword lists with one click directly inside the Search Terms Report, so you're not copying terms out, pasting them into Google Ads Editor, and pushing changes back through a separate workflow. For solo advertisers that's a time saver; for agencies juggling negative lists across several client accounts, it keeps the process consistent from one account to the next.

Step 5: Promote High-Intent Search Terms Into Keywords

Cutting junk is half the job. The other half is catching the search terms that are already converting well but aren't set up as their own keywords yet. If a search term is showing a strong conversion rate or a healthy return relative to spend, and it's currently only being caught through a broader match type on a different keyword, that's a signal to promote it.

Match type choice here deserves the same deliberateness as it does on the negative side. For a search term with a proven track record, exact match gives you the tightest control: you can set its own bid, monitor its own performance, and know precisely what's driving its results without other queries blending into the same data. Phrase match is the better call when you want to keep capturing some natural variation around that phrase without opening the door as wide as broad match would.

For example, suppose your account has a broad match keyword for "accounting software small business," and inside the Search Terms Report you notice the exact phrase "accounting software for small business owners" converting at a noticeably higher rate than the rest of the terms feeding into that keyword. That phrase deserves its own exact-match keyword. Right now it's sharing a bid with everything else broad match happens to pull in, which means you can't push more budget toward it specifically or track its performance in isolation. Splitting it out gives you that control.

Not every well-performing search term needs this treatment. If a term converts occasionally but doesn't have enough volume to justify its own keyword and bid, it may be fine to leave it under the existing broader keyword. Reserve promotion for terms with a consistent pattern, not a single lucky conversion.

Step 6: Group Related Terms Into Themed Keyword Sets

When you find several high-intent search terms worth promoting at once, resist the urge to add them one at a time into whatever ad group happens to be open. Adding unrelated one-off keywords into an existing ad group fragments its theme, which makes it harder to write ad copy that speaks directly to all the keywords inside it.

Instead, cluster the new terms by shared intent or topic before you add them. If you're pulling several converting search terms related to "invoice software for freelancers" and a separate batch related to "invoice software for contractors," those probably belong in two different ad groups, each with its own tightly matched ad copy, rather than one mixed group covering both.

Clustering this way keeps your ad relevance signals tighter, since each ad group is built around a coherent theme instead of a grab bag of loosely related terms. That consistency matters for how Google evaluates the relevance between your keywords, ads, and landing pages.

Doing this manually across a large account, especially one with many client campaigns, gets tedious fast. Keywordme's keyword clustering feature can group similar search terms automatically, which is particularly useful for agencies managing several accounts with large search term volumes and limited hours to sort through them by hand. It doesn't replace your judgment on which clusters deserve their own ad group, but it does the initial sorting work for you.

Step 7: Set a Recurring Review Cadence

A one-time cleanup of the Search Terms Report helps, but the report refills with new queries every day, so this needs to become a recurring habit rather than a single project. How often you review should depend on how much traffic and spend the account generates, not on an arbitrary calendar rule.

• High-spend accounts with daily click volume in the hundreds benefit from a weekly review, since junk terms and new high-intent terms both accumulate fast.
• Lower-volume campaigns can move to a biweekly or monthly cadence, since a shorter window won't have enough data to act on confidently.

Whatever cadence you settle on, track the before-and-after cost-per-conversion or wasted spend for the specific terms you acted on in the previous cycle. This confirms whether your negative keyword additions and new keyword promotions actually moved the needle, rather than just assuming they did because it felt like the right call at the time.

It's also worth keeping a simple record of what you excluded and why, whether that's notes attached to your shared negative keyword list or a separate log you keep for the account. Without this, it's easy for a future review, especially if a different team member runs it, to re-litigate the same search terms you already ruled out weeks earlier. A few lines of documentation per review cycle saves real time down the line.

Turning This Into a Habit, Not a One-Off Cleanup

Run through this cycle on a regular schedule, and before moving on to the next batch of search terms, check that the negative keyword lists and new keyword additions you put in place are actually reducing wasted spend. If cost-per-conversion isn't improving on the terms you acted on, revisit the match type or the level you applied the negative at rather than assuming the work is done.

Optimize Google Ads campaigns 10X faster, without leaving your account. Keywordme lets you remove junk search terms, build high-intent keyword lists, and apply match types instantly, right inside Google Ads. No spreadsheets, no switching tabs, just quick, seamless optimization. Start your free 7-day trial (then just $12/month) and take your Google Ads game to the next level.