Review search terms every week
A weekly routine for finding wasted ad spend, adding negative keywords and moving budget to the terms that sell.
Most wasted advertising spend sits in search terms nobody looked at. A short weekly review catches it before it adds up.
Pull the search term report
Export the search terms for the last week or two, with spend, clicks, orders and sales. Sort by spend, not by impressions.
Sort the terms
Put each term with meaningful spend into one of three groups. Terms that sell at an acceptable cost stay. Terms that spend without selling become negative keywords. Terms with too little data wait another week.
Agree the threshold for each group before you start, so the review does not turn into a debate about every term.
Act on the result
Add the negatives at the right level, either the campaign or the ad group. Move proven terms into their own exact-match targets so you can bid on them directly.
Keep a person on the budget
An agent can pull the report, group the terms and draft the negatives. A person approves anything that changes spend or bids.
Want this run for your operation?
This playbook comes straight from client work. If you'd rather have it done than do it, that's what JS Labs is for.
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