How to Read a Search Terms Report

Every Google Ads account contains a document listing exactly where its budget went. It is called the search terms report, it takes about ten minutes to read, and on most accounts nobody has opened it since the campaigns were built. It is also, consistently, the highest-return hour anyone spends on a paid account.

Keywords Are What You Bid On. Search Terms Are What You Paid For.

This is the distinction the whole report rests on. A keyword is the phrase you told Google you want to appear for. A search term is what someone actually typed. With anything other than exact match, those two drift apart — sometimes usefully, often expensively.

The report sits in the Google Ads interface under the keywords section. Set the date range wide enough to have volume, and sort by cost rather than by clicks. You are looking for money, not activity.

Four Patterns Worth Looking For

• Free, cheap, DIY. Someone searching "free CRM" is not buying a paid one. These are the clearest wasted clicks in most accounts.
• Jobs and careers. "SEO agency jobs" costs the same as "SEO agency" and converts at zero.
• Competitor names. Sometimes worth bidding on deliberately; almost never worth doing accidentally.
• Wrong product entirely. Broad match reaches further than most people expect, especially on short keywords.

Each one you find becomes a negative keyword. That is the entire output of the exercise, and it is why it is worth doing weekly rather than once.

Match Type Drift Is the Usual Cause

When cost per lead rises without anything obvious changing, broad match with a thin negative list is the most common explanation. The system gradually reaches further from your original intent, and the report is where that becomes visible.

Fixing it is not usually about abandoning broad match — it is about maintaining the negative list that makes broad match safe. That maintenance is a large part of what PPC management services actually consist of.

Add Negatives at the Right Level

Negative keywords can sit at ad group, campaign or account level. Terms that are wrong for the whole business — jobs, free, competitor names you do not want — belong at account level in a shared list. Terms that are wrong only for one campaign belong there. Putting everything at ad group level means adding the same negative dozens of times and missing it somewhere.

What the Report Cannot Tell You

Google withholds a share of search terms for privacy reasons, so the report is never complete. It also cannot tell you whether the conversions it credits are real — that depends on whether your tracking is right, which is a separate check and one worth doing before you trust any of the numbers.

If your account looks fine and the pipeline is flat, that gap is usually tracking rather than targeting. A Google Ads audit in read-only access settles which.

Do It Weekly

This is unglamorous work that does not photograph well in a monthly report, which is roughly why it gets skipped in favor of bid adjustments that look like management. Ten minutes a week on this report will do more for most accounts than any amount of automated bidding strategy tuning.

If you would like someone to read yours, we will do it in read-only access and show you what we find — whether you work with us or not.