The search term report that saved $50K in 30 days

I opened the search term report expecting routine cleanup. What I found was a $50K leak.

One keyword: "industrial marking system." Broad match. Running for six months.

Google had decided "industrial marking system" was close enough to match to:

• "industrial marking pen" (consumer)
• "how to mark industrial pipes" (informational)
• "industrial marking system minecraft" (I'm not making this up)
• "mark industrial equipment for tax purposes" (completely different thing)

Every one of those irrelevant clicks was going to a landing page for a $15,000+ laser marking machine. Zero of them converted. Together they were costing us roughly $1,600 a day.

How Google hides this

Search terms aren't shown by default. You have to go looking.

And when you do look, Google has been progressively hiding more of the low-volume terms under "Other search terms" — an aggregate bucket where you can see the spend but not the individual queries.

So the report shows the terms Google wants you to see. The garbage often hides in the aggregate.

To find it properly, you need to:

1. Pull the search term report with no filters
2. Sort by cost descending
3. Look at the actual query, not just the keyword it matched to
4. Flag anything where the query clearly shows wrong intent

What to look for in B2B

Consumer modifiers: "how to," "DIY," "at home," "cheap," "Amazon," specific consumer product names

Academic modifiers: "research," "definition," "for students," "meaning of," "Wikipedia"

Employment: "jobs," "career," "salary," "training," "certification course"

Competitors (if you're not running conquest): exact competitor brand names

Generic informational: "what is," "types of," "history of"

These queries are almost never purchase intent in industrial B2B. They're curiosity or research or job hunting. None of them buy $15,000 laser markers.

The $50K fix

We added 140 negative keywords in a single afternoon. Blocked every consumer, academic, and informational variant we could find in the search term report.

Monthly spend on that campaign dropped 35%. Conversion rate went from 0.4% to 1.8%. Pipeline from the campaign increased.

Less spend. More pipeline. Because we stopped paying Google to show our ads to people who were never going to buy.

The cadence

This isn't a one-time fix. Google's matching gets more aggressive over time. New queries appear constantly.

Weekly search term review is not optional at scale. It's the actual job.

If you're running more than $5K/month in search, set a standing 30-minute calendar block each week. Pull the report. Sort by cost. Flag the garbage. Add negatives.

That's the highest-ROI activity in the account.