ScaleySearch Terms Waste Finder
The Search Terms Waste Finder reads your Google Ads search terms export and adds up the money spent on searches that never sold. Paste the report or drop in the CSV, add your break-even ROAS, and get the total plus your top 20 negative keywords. In our sample store, $70 of $315 bought zero sales.
Your Top 3 Negatives to Check
Zero-sale terms, most expensive first, in exact match. Read each one before you block it.
- [linen shirt pattern free]$38.5064 clicks
- [how to wash linen shirt]$22.4041 clicks
- [linen shirt jobs]$9.1013 clicks
Selling Below Break-Even
These terms make sales, so do not block them. Lower the bid, or fix the page or the price. The number on the right is only the overspend.
- white linen shirt$80.00 spent, ROAS 1.88x$20.00
- linen shirt sale$45.00 spent, ROAS 2x$9.00
Next step
See This Live, Any Day You Ask
This file is one moment. New searches show up every day. Scaley Media Buyerconnects to Google Ads read-only and reads your live search terms whenever you ask. Ask "where is my money leaking?" and it answers from the live account. It cannot change a setting.
Scaley Media Buyer carries the Leak Guarantee. Every month, if the wasted ad spend Scaley shows you is smaller than that month's bill, we refund the whole bill. Wasted spend means money spent in that 30-day billing cycle on search terms and products that, over 14 days, passed Scaley's spend line and made back 1.7 times their cost or less. Your conversion tracking has to be working, your ads have to be running, and your Google Ads account has to stay connected to Scaley. It covers every paid bill. Ask within 14 days of the bill. Full terms.
$99/mo for all your stores + 1% of total ad spend. 3-day free trial. Card required. Cancel anytime.
How the Waste Finder Counts
- Zero-sale waste
- cost of every search term with 0 conversions
- Term ROAS
- conversion value / cost
- Overspend
- cost - conversion value / break-even ROAS
- Waste share
- zero-sale waste / total cost x 100
- Negatives
- top 20 zero-sale terms by cost, as [exact match]
A search term with spend and zero sales is the clean case. Every cent of it bought nothing, so all of it counts as waste.
A term that sells, but under your break-even ROAS, is different. The sales are real. So the finder never counts all of its spend as waste. It counts only the overspend: the part of the cost those sales did not pay for. That number is shown on its own line, never added to the zero-sale total.
Overspend uses the conversion value column. If your file has no value column, the finder still adds up zero-sale waste, but it cannot judge ROAS.
Two Worked Examples
A Linen Shirt Store with a 40% Margin
6 search terms, $315 of spend in 30 days. A 40% margin means a break-even ROAS of 2.5x.
- Zero-sale terms: "linen shirt pattern free": $38.50, "how to wash linen shirt": $22.40, "linen shirt jobs": $9.10
- Zero-sale waste: $70 (22% of spend)
- Under break-even: 2 terms, overspend $29
- Negatives to check: [linen shirt pattern free], [how to wash linen shirt], [linen shirt jobs]
$70 bought nothing at all. Those three searches go on the list to check first. The two terms under 2.5x still sell, so they need a lower bid or a better page, not a block.
The Same Store at a 25% Margin
Same six terms, same spend. The margin is thinner, so break-even ROAS rises to 4x.
- Zero-sale waste: $70 (no change)
- Under break-even: 3 terms, overspend $95
- Overspend at 2.5x: $29. At 4x: $95
Zero-sale waste does not care about your margin. Overspend does. At 4x, every term in the file that sells is under break-even. That is why the finder asks for your own number and never guesses one.
How Much Wasted Spend Is Normal
There is no honest public average. Nobody can see inside other people's accounts, and every account has some waste, because Google needs clicks to learn.
The number that matters is yours. A simple rule from our five places Google Ads wastes money guide: a search term is waste once it has spent about what one sale is worth to you, with zero sales. One that spent less is still a test.
If your zero-sale total is more than one sale is worth to you, fix it this week.
How to Download Your Search Terms Report
The full walk-through is in our search terms report guide. The short version:
- In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms.
- Pick the last 30 days. On a small account, pick 90.
- Use the Columns button so Cost, Conversions and Conv. value show next to every term.
- Download the table as CSV or TSV. Google also offers Excel CSV, XLSX, PDF, XML and Google Sheets. This tool reads CSV and TSV, or rows pasted from Sheets or Excel.
- Drop the file in the box above, or paste the rows.
Your File Never Leaves Your Browser
The finder runs 100% in your browser. Your file is read on your own computer and is never uploaded. Nothing you paste is sent to us or stored.
Close the tab and it is gone.
What the Report Cannot Show You
Google leaves some searches out of the search terms report. Its help page says terms without enough query activity are left out to keep with its standards on data privacy. That spend is real. You just cannot see the words.
Some exports add a total row for those other search terms. When your file has one, the finder shows that spend as hidden spend, on its own line. It is never counted as waste, because nobody can tell what it bought.
Common Mistakes
Blocking after one bad day
One day is noise. Wait until a term has spent about one sale's worth with zero sales.
Blocking a term when the page is the problem
Some searches are perfect and still do not sell. The price, the stock or the page is the issue. A negative just hides it.
Counting all low-ROAS spend as waste
A term at 2x when you need 2.5x still sells. Only the overspend is lost. Cut its bid, do not block it.
Forgetting plurals
Google says negative keywords do not match close variants. Blocking "job" does not block "jobs". Add both.
Trusting broken tracking
If sales are not counted, good terms look like waste. Check conversion tracking before you block anything.
Read next
- Google Ads wasted spend: the five places it hides
- How to read the Google Ads search terms report
- What are negative keywords, and how to add them
- Negative keyword examples for online stores
- Get your break-even ROAS first
Sources: Google Ads Help: About the search terms report; Google Ads Help: About negative keywords; Google Ads Help: Create, save, and schedule reports.
Questions People Ask
No. Your browser reads the file on your own computer. Nothing is uploaded, sent to us or saved. Close the tab and it is gone.
More Free Tools
One export shows one moment. Scaley Media Buyer reads the live search terms any day you ask, read-only.
$99/mo for all your stores + 1% of total ad spend. 3-day free trial. Card required. Cancel anytime.