Negative Keyword Hygiene: A Monthly Routine That Saves Budget

Search campaigns lose budget in the same handful of places every month: irrelevant queries, competitor terms nobody agreed to buy, and job-seeker or research traffic that will never convert. A short monthly routine keeps that leakage under control without turning into a full-time job.

Review the search terms report by spend, not by volume

Sort search terms by cost rather than by impressions. A query with a thousand impressions and almost no cost is a curiosity. A query with twenty impressions and a disproportionate share of the day’s spend is the one costing you money. Working from the top of a cost-sorted list means an hour of review covers most of the problem.

Classify before you exclude

Group what you find into three buckets: clearly irrelevant, ambiguous, and relevant but underperforming. Only the first bucket belongs in a shared negative list immediately. The ambiguous bucket goes into a small test campaign with a controlled budget, because excluding a term you do not understand removes a learning opportunity at no benefit.

Use shared lists so the work is not repeated

Maintain one shared negative list per market at account level, and one per campaign group for terms that are specific to a product line. When a term is genuinely irrelevant everywhere, it belongs in the market list. Keeping the lists small and purposeful makes them easier to audit when a colleague inherits the account.

Close the loop with the people who know the product

Every month, send the ten most expensive irrelevant terms to the client’s product or operations team. They often spot a mismatch between how the business describes itself and how customers search. That conversation is usually more valuable than the exclusion itself.