Welcome to Issue #1 of 5AM Field Notes. Most negative keyword rules only look at
By Michael Erickson Facchin · November 4, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Welcome to Issue #1 of 5AM Field Notes.
Most negative keyword rules only look at the last 30 or 60 days. That works fine for obvious bleeders, and completely misses the search term quietly eating 5 clicks a month with zero orders for a year straight.
In our first issue, I break down:
1. Why a 30-day lookback misses your slowest long-tail leaks (and how a 999-day lookback catches them)
2. All 8 rungs of the Wasted Spend Ladder (from a free 60-second browser sheet up to our deterministic Wasted Spend AI Skill)
3. Why blindly negating zero-order terms breaks your brand keywords (and the 3 fixes we use instead)
4. Two AI search tests from Episode 407 with Scotty Peck of CrankTank (managing 10,000 ASINs)
Read Issue #1 below, and let me know which rung of the ladder your team is running on today.