Turning the search terms report into negatives and ad groups

Fibvo editorial · 16 August 2026 · 5 min read

You open the search terms report for the first time and find your ads appearing for searches you never chose. A corrugated box manufacturer in Pune bids on 'corrugated boxes' and pays for clicks on 'corrugated box making machine', 'how to make a cardboard box at home' and 'packaging jobs in Pune'. The instinct is to block everything that looks wrong and move on. A slower read gives you two things: a list of what to exclude, and a list of what to build.

What the report shows, and what it hides

A keyword is what you bid on. A search term is what someone actually typed. With broad match, phrase match and close variants of exact match, one keyword can match many different searches. The search terms report lists the searches that triggered your ads, with the campaign, ad group and match type beside each one. The Added/Excluded column shows whether a term is already one of your keywords or already blocked.

Two limits matter. Google does not show searches made by too few people, so part of your spend appears only as a total, without the terms behind it. And a short date range in a small account shows mostly noise. Use at least 30 days, and longer if your volume is low.

Sort by cost, then label every term

Reading the report in its default order wastes time. Download it to a spreadsheet and arrange it so the expensive decisions come first.

• Sort by cost, highest first. A term that has cost almost nothing can wait.
• Include the conversions and cost per conversion columns. If conversion tracking is not working, fix that before judging any term.
• Add the Keyword column, which is not shown by default, so you can see which of your keywords matched each term. When one loose keyword keeps pulling in the wrong searches, tightening or pausing it may do more than a long list of negatives.

Then give each term with meaningful spend one of four labels.

• Keep: relevant, and already reaching an ad that speaks to it. No action.
• Exclude: the searcher wants something you do not sell, such as a machine, a job, a tutorial or a free template.
• Promote: relevant and commercial, but landing in an ad group whose ad does not match what was asked.
• Watch: plausible, with too little data to judge. Look again next month.

For the box manufacturer, 'corrugated box making machine' is an exclude, '5 ply corrugated box price' is a promote, and 'eco friendly packaging boxes' can sit in watch until it has more clicks.

The search terms report is not a list of mistakes to delete. It is the plainest record you have of how buyers describe what they want.

Writing negatives that block the right searches

Negative keywords follow different rules from the keywords you bid on, and most mistakes come from forgetting that.

• They do not match close variants. A negative for 'machine' does not block 'machines'. Add plurals and common misspellings yourself.
• Negative broad blocks searches containing all the words in any order. Negative phrase blocks searches containing the words in that order. Negative exact blocks only that exact search. Single, clearly irrelevant words such as 'jobs' or 'DIY' usually work as negative broad.
• Look at words, not only whole terms. Split every search term into single words in your spreadsheet and total the cost for each word. 'Machine' may turn up across many separate terms that each looked too small to act on.
• Place each negative at the right level. A word that is irrelevant to the whole business, such as 'salary', belongs in a shared negative keyword list applied to every campaign. A word that is wrong for one product only belongs in that ad group or campaign.
• Check each new negative against your own keywords before saving. A negative that matches one of your keywords stops it showing for those searches.

Building new ad groups from promoted terms

Promoted terms tend to cluster. When several searches share a specification, material or use, such as ply count, printed boxes or boxes for e-commerce shipping, that cluster deserves its own ad group.

• Group promoted terms by what the buyer is asking for, not by the words they happen to share.
• Create an ad group for each cluster with enough searches to matter, using the terms as phrase or exact match keywords.
• Write ads that repeat the buyer's specification in a headline, and point them at the page or section that answers it.
• In the original, broader ad group, add the same terms as negative exact keywords. Google generally prefers a keyword that is identical to the search, but similar searches can still land in the broader group without this step.

How often to go back

In the first month of a new campaign, review search terms weekly. That is when wrong searches cost the most, because nothing has been excluded yet. After that, a monthly review suits most small accounts. Keep each month's labelled spreadsheet. When a useful search stops appearing, the history shows whether a negative you added is the cause. And when the same unwanted theme returns month after month despite your negatives, the keyword behind it is probably too broad for your budget.

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Written by Fibvo — Bengaluru and Erode, India — working with clients in other time zones. Questions, or think we have it wrong? Tell us.