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Which Google Ads search terms are wasting money?

The search terms wasting money are the ones that take clicks and spend without converting, and whose intent does not match what you sell. Adstudio reads the search terms report per campaign, ranks terms by spend without conversions, judges intent — your own brand, competitors, unrelated meaning — and proposes negatives you approve before anything changes.

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The numbers that matter

What to read first.

Cost per search term
Shown as a share of the campaign's Search network spend, the only spend search terms can explain.
Conversions per search term
Zero over a long enough window, with real spend, is the candidate list.
Match type
Broad match is where unrelated terms usually come from.

The method

How to break it down.

  1. 01Read the search terms of the campaign over 30 days or more.
  2. 02Keep terms with real spend and no conversions, and note what share of the campaign's search spend they cover.
  3. 03Judge intent: a term naming your product with zero conversions is a landing-page question, not a negative.
  4. 04Add the clear mismatches as campaign negatives at the right match type.

How Adstudio answers it

In the app, or from the AI you already use.

In the Adstudio assistant

The assistant reads search terms with their spend, conversions and match type, and judges them against the Search contract's search-term guardrails before recommending a negative. It then prepares the campaign negative keywords, has Google validate them, and adds them only after you confirm.

From ChatGPT or Claude, over MCP

Not over MCP. The data this question needs is available only to the assistant inside Adstudio. MCP is the way to ask other questions about the same account from your own AI.

Prompts

Copy one and ask.

  • “Which search terms spent the most without converting in the last 60 days?”
  • “Group my wasted search terms by theme and tell me which ones should be negatives.”
  • “Add the competitor and job-seeker terms as phrase match negatives to the brand campaign.”

Limits

What Adstudio will not tell you.

  • Search terms are read in the Adstudio app; Adstudio MCP does not return search terms to ChatGPT or Claude.
  • Google hides low-volume search terms, so the terms listed cover part of the spend; Adstudio says how much.

FAQ

Questions people also ask.

It reads search terms for Search campaigns. For Performance Max it reads search themes and asset groups instead.

It adds campaign-level negatives. Shared negative lists are created during a new Search campaign build.

Creating an account costs nothing, but connecting an ad account needs a paid plan: Hobby at $19 a month, or Business at $39 per workspace a month. There is no trial, and the price does not depend on your ad spend.