Find Wasted Ad Spend and Set Negatives

In a few minutes you find out which search terms are burning your Google Ads budget without bringing anything in, and you stop them before they cost you more. All by prompt, without clicking through the Ads interface.

Every Google Ads account pays for searches that never turn into a customer: someone searches for free, cheap, or a job, clicks your ad, and is gone again. That money is called wasted spend. By the end of this tutorial you'll have found these terms, judged them, and excluded the clearly irrelevant ones as negative keywords. A negative keyword is an instruction to Google: "For this search, I don't want to appear." After that, your ads run into the void less often.

What you need

• Google Ads connected (required). Without a connected Google Ads account, your agent has no numbers. To connect it, see Connect Marketing Accounts to Claude; for ChatGPT, Connect Marketing Accounts to ChatGPT shows the same setup.
• Conversion tracking set up (recommended). The whole method hinges on the question "costs money, but brings no conversion". Without conversion tracking, every term shows 0 conversions, and you can't tell what truly brings nothing from what simply isn't being measured. Without tracking, you skip the conversion assessment in step 2 and sort only by "obviously off-topic".

1. Find the wasted spend

First you look at what your account is paying for without anything coming back.

Show me for [workspace] the search terms of the last 30 days
that cost money but brought no conversion.
Sort by cost, the most expensive first.

What you get back:

Term                     Clicks   Cost    Conversions
free template               61     €143        0
marketing jobs              34      €78        0
free guide                  22      €41        0
... 7 more terms           118     €206        0
Total                      235     €468        0

Roughly €468 in 30 days without a single conversion: that's your starting point.

✓ Checkpoint: You have a list of terms with costs, and the Conversions column reads 0 everywhere.

Doesn't work? If you get "no data" or an empty list, either Google Ads isn't connected (see "What you need") or the time frame is too short: use 30 days instead of 7.

2. Judge the terms (not everything is junk)

0 conversions doesn't automatically mean "out". Sort first, then exclude.

Split the terms into three groups:
1. clearly wrong intent (e.g. "free", "cheap", job searches)
2. off-topic for what I offer
3. research terms that occasionally do convert

What you get back:

Clearly wrong intent:   free template, free guide, marketing jobs
Off-topic:              online advertising, product photography
Edge case (keep):       "provider comparison": 1 conversion in 30 days

A term with 0 conversions and €200 in cost is a clear candidate. A term with 0 conversions but only 3 clicks simply never had a real chance: it stays for now. And research terms that convert every so often, you don't exclude, or you cut off real inquiries.

✓ Checkpoint: Every expensive term is assigned to a group, and you know which terms from groups 1 and 2 you want to exclude.

Doesn't work? If every term shows 0 conversions even though the account demonstrably brings inquiries, conversion tracking is probably missing: then judge only by groups 1 and 2 and leave the conversions column aside.

3. Set negatives (campaign or whole account)

Now you exclude the terms. Use the words that keep recurring in your junk terms, here: free, cheap, jobs. If you don't know your campaign name, ask quickly first: "Which campaigns are running in [workspace]?" Your agent writes nothing on its own: it puts a proposal on the table first.

Add "free", "cheap" and "jobs" as negative keywords
for the campaign [campaign name]. Show me the proposal first.

What you get back:

Proposal: 3 negative keywords

  free    → broad match
  cheap   → broad match
  jobs    → broad match

Level:      campaign "client-a Search"
Reversible: yes (the negative can be removed again)
Run it? (yes / one by one / no)

Only after your "yes" does the agent write the negatives into the account.

Campaign or whole account? A negative keyword at campaign level works only in that one campaign. As an account-wide negative, you block the term in all campaigns, including future ones. Rule of thumb: terms that never fit your whole business (e.g. "free", "jobs") belong on the account; terms that only disturb one specific campaign, on the campaign. Just add it to the prompt: "as an account-wide negative" or "only for campaign X".

A quick word on match types: broad match excludes the widest, phrase match only when the words appear in that order, exact match only that exact term. For single-word themes like "free" or "jobs", broad is right; for a fixed phrase like "cheap template", phrase match is better. Not sure? Have your agent recommend a match type per term.

✓ Checkpoint: The agent showed you a proposal with terms, match type, and target level, and after your "yes" reported the terms back as "added".

Doesn't work? If the agent reports that it isn't allowed to write, your workspace is missing write permission for Google Ads. That's controlled not by the agent but by your role in the portal (app.ads.honeyfield.at): read means read only, write means change.

4. Check the changes

Finally, verify that only what you wanted is actually in the account.

Show me the latest changes in the account: what was changed and when?

What you get back:

Time           Who                     Change
Today 14:32    Account login client-a  Negative keyword created (campaign "client-a Search")
Today 14:32    Account login client-a  Negative keyword created (campaign "client-a Search")
Today 14:32    Account login client-a  Negative keyword created (campaign "client-a Search")

That's Google's own change history (at most 29 days back): time, connected account login, and type of change. Alternatively, have the current negatives of the campaign listed and check whether your new terms are among them.

✓ Checkpoint: Your three terms appear as freshly created negatives with today's timestamp.

Doesn't work? If the history shows nothing, the change may not have been confirmed after all: go back to step 3 and watch for the "added" confirmation. Note also: the history shows that a negative was created and when, but not always the exact term text: for that, use the negatives list.

Variations

• "Give me the 20 most expensive search terms without a conversion from the last 90 days." (longer time frame, more signal)
• "Which recurring words show up in my wasted search terms?" (finds patterns like "free" or "job" instead of single terms)
• "Suggest negative keywords to me, but don't set anything yet." (proposal only, you decide later)

Honest limit

• Negatives only work going forward. Clicks you've already paid for you don't get back, but you stop future ones.
• Negatives don't catch word variants and typos. "free" as a negative doesn't automatically block "freebie" or "free of charge": Google treats those as separate variants. For stubborn themes, exclude several spellings.
• A portion stays invisible. Google hides very rare search terms for privacy reasons. A small remainder of your budget never surfaces as a concrete term: that part you can't exclude this way.
• Fresh numbers lie a little. Conversions are attributed back to the click date retroactively. Don't judge the last few days too harshly, or you exclude a term that's only just starting to convert.
• No automatic safety net. There's no server-side limit that stops you. That the agent asks before writing is its behavior: in Claude it shows the proposal and waits, in ChatGPT depending on the connector's permission setting. Whether anything may be written at all is decided by your workspace permission (read versus write). So read the proposal before you say "yes".

What's next

Your ads now run into the void less often. Next, you make sure they also look good for the right searches: in the next tutorial you have ad copy written that fits your terms. → Have Your Agent Write Google Ads Copy