Lesson 4.2: Mining for New Keywords and Negatives
By the end of this lesson, you'll know the three-column review process for working through the Search Terms Report efficiently, including how to promote terms to keywords and how to build a negative list that actually prevents waste.
Here's a simple, repeatable process for working through the Search Terms Report. It takes twenty minutes once you've done it a few times.
The three-column review
Export the Search Terms Report for the last fourteen to thirty days. In a spreadsheet, add three columns:
Column 1 — Promote. Queries that drove conversions, have strong intent signals, and aren't currently in your keyword list as their own keyword. These get promoted to keywords, usually at phrase or exact match, in the appropriate ad group.
Column 2 — Negative. Queries that drove clicks but clearly don't match your offer. Don't set a spending threshold for this column. If you see "DIY" in a query for a service campaign, add "DIY" as a negative. If you see a competitor brand you're not trying to capture, add it. You don't need to spend $50 on a clearly wrong query to confirm it's wrong.
Column 3 — Watch. Queries you're not sure about yet. Not enough data to promote, not clearly wrong enough to negative. Flag them for next week's review.
Promoting a search term to a keyword
Before promoting a search term, run a quick SERP check (you learned this in Lesson 2.3). Confirm the query has transactional intent and would land sensibly on your current landing page. Then add it to the appropriate ad group at the right match type with its own ad, if the volume and intent justify it.
Don't add every converting query as its own keyword. If a search term matches cleanly against an existing phrase match keyword and the ad copy is already relevant, promoting it to its own exact match keyword is optional. The question to ask: would having this as its own exact match keyword give me better control over bid and ad copy for this specific intent? If yes, promote it. If no, the phrase match is serving it well enough.
Building a negative keyword list that actually works
A negative keyword list fails when it's either too aggressive (blocking good traffic by adding overly broad negatives) or too passive (adding negatives only after spending real money on clearly wrong queries).
The right approach: add obvious negatives from your research before launch (Module 2 gave you a starter list), then extend it weekly using Column 2 of your Search Terms review. Review your negative list quarterly to make sure nothing has been negated that shouldn't be.