Pulled a search term report last week, the brand was spending $4,200 a month on
By Noah Wickham · June 24, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Pulled a search term report last week, the brand was spending $4,200 a month on a single broad-match keyword bidding on a competitor brand name
The competitor's name had been in their search terms for 18 months, no conversions, just bleed
Negative keywords are the unsexiest lever in PPC and they outperform every bid adjustment, every campaign restructure, every "AI optimization" tool
Three categories of negatives every account needs
➝ Irrelevant terms, products in your broad campaigns that aren't yours, "yoga blocks" when you sell yoga mats
➝ Brand poaching, competitor brand names showing up in search terms with poor conversion
➝ Wrong-intent keywords, "free yoga mat" or "yoga mat samples" or "yoga mat reviews" attract clicks but never buyers
The structural negatives most accounts skip
When you promote a winner from broad to phrase, you have to negate it from broad
When you promote a winner from phrase to exact, you have to negate it from phrase AND broad
Without the negation, the same keyword competes against itself across three campaigns and Amazon happily takes the highest bid every time
Audit cadence that actually works
Weekly, pull the search term report for any campaign spending over $500 a month, scan for new irrelevant terms
Monthly, review accumulated negatives across the account, look for patterns
Quarterly, refresh the negative list, kill terms that are no longer relevant, add new ones based on emerging waste
Better negatives drop ACoS faster than better bids
Most accounts are spending 20 to 30 percent of their PPC budget on terms they shouldn't be bidding on at all
The brands that scrub their search terms regularly run leaner accounts, lower TACoS, and more profitable scale