How do I know if I’m bidding on too many irrelevant terms?

What “bidding on too many irrelevant terms” really looks like in Google Ads

Most advertisers don’t wake up one day and decide to target irrelevant searches. It usually happens gradually as your keyword match types, campaign automation, and landing-page signals expand what your ads can match to. The key is knowing the difference between healthy exploration (new queries that could become profitable) and wasted intent (queries that can’t realistically convert for your offer).

The clearest sign you’re bidding on too many irrelevant terms is when your account is “busy” (lots of impressions/clicks/spend) but business outcomes don’t scale with it. In practical terms, you’ll often see good impression volume, middling or declining CTR, rising costs, and conversions that are either inconsistent or concentrated in a small subset of queries while everything else leaks budget.

Red flags that usually indicate an irrelevance problem (not just a conversion-rate problem)

If your ads are frequently matching to searches that indicate the wrong product category, the wrong customer stage (research-only vs. ready-to-buy), or the wrong geography/service area, you’re not just under-optimized—you’re paying to show up for intent you don’t want.

• Spend is distributed across many search terms with no clear “core” set driving most conversions.
• CTR drops while impression volume grows after adding broad match keywords, enabling query expansion features, or consolidating campaigns.
• Search terms look “adjacent” but wrong (similar words, different meaning), which often happens because matching considers meaning/intent, not just literal wording.
• You’re adding negatives constantly yet irrelevant traffic keeps finding new paths in, which usually points to structural issues (mixed ad groups, unclear landing pages, overly-open matching settings).

How to confirm it (and pinpoint where the irrelevant terms are coming from)

Step 1: Use the Search terms report like a forensic tool (not a curiosity report)

Start with the Search terms report and make sure you’re actually looking at it with the columns that explain why a query matched. The two columns that matter most are Keyword (what matched) and Match type (how it matched). This is where many advertisers get misled—because the match type shown in the report can differ from the match type you set on the keyword, depending on how the query matched in practice.

Then, look at search terms through the lens of intent buckets. A simple approach that works across most industries is to mentally label each term as: “definitely relevant,” “maybe relevant,” or “definitely irrelevant.” The “maybe” bucket is where you decide whether your ads and landing page can be adjusted to convert that intent—or whether it should be excluded.

Step 2: Don’t ignore Search terms insights (especially when terms are missing)

It’s normal to notice that not every query appears in the Search terms report. Some low-activity queries are omitted to meet privacy thresholds, and this can hide long-tail waste if you rely on the report alone. That’s why Search terms insights is valuable: it groups searches into categories and subcategories so you can spot themes that are drifting off-target—even when individual queries aren’t fully visible.

A very common pattern I see: advertisers only negate what they can see, but the “invisible” long tail keeps spending in the wrong areas. Use insights to identify category-level problems (like “jobs,” “free,” “DIY,” “definition,” “near me” when you don’t serve locally, etc.), then build smarter exclusions and tighter targeting around those themes.

Step 3: Identify whether the issue is match behavior, structure, or signals

Once you’ve found irrelevant terms, the next question is: why are you matching to them? In modern query matching, especially with broad match, eligibility can be influenced by more than the keyword text alone. Matching can take into account signals like the user’s recent search activity, your landing page content, and other keywords in the ad group to interpret intent. If your ad group blends multiple themes—or your landing page is “broad” and talks about too many things—query matching can widen in ways that feel surprising.

Also remember that close variants are part of the system and you can’t opt out. Even exact match can serve on searches with the same meaning or intent, not necessarily identical wording. So if you’re seeing “weird” queries from exact/phrase, don’t assume the platform is “ignoring” your match types; instead, treat it as a signal that your intent boundaries (and exclusions) need to be clearer.

Step 4: Campaign type matters (Search vs. Performance Max vs. DSA/Shopping)

If you’re running Performance Max, you now have access to a search terms report experience that helps you see which searches triggered ads and which led to conversions, with reporting that only goes back to March 2023. That’s helpful for diagnosing irrelevance, but you also need to control it correctly: for Performance Max, negative keywords apply to Search and Shopping inventory. If you’re trying to prevent your ads from showing alongside irrelevant content on Display/Video inventory, you’ll typically need to use excluded content keywords and other content suitability controls—otherwise you may still see unwanted terms showing up in reporting.

How to reduce irrelevant terms without strangling performance

Use negatives strategically (and choose the right level: ad group, campaign, or account)

Negatives are still the fastest way to stop obvious waste, but they need to be applied in a way that matches how broad your account structure is.

If an irrelevant theme is never going to be relevant to your business (for example, “jobs,” “salary,” “free,” “definition,” “template,” “DIY,” “used,” or a product line you don’t carry), that’s a strong candidate for account-level negative keywords so it’s blocked across eligible Search and Shopping inventory.

If the theme is only irrelevant to one product/service line, keep it at the campaign or ad group level so you don’t accidentally block valid traffic elsewhere.

Also pay attention to match type. When you add negatives directly from the Search terms report in a Search campaign, they’re typically added as negative exact match by default. That’s safe, but it can be too narrow if the problem is a theme rather than a single query. If you keep seeing close cousins of the same bad intent, you may need negative phrase or negative broad.

Know the current behavior around misspellings (this changed)

Two changes that materially affect “irrelevant term control” are worth knowing about. First, updates announced on June 26, 2024 increased visibility by reporting misspelled queries using the correctly spelled version more often (which can make your reports look cleaner and easier to act on). Second, negative keywords now account for misspellings more effectively, so you don’t have to add endless typo variations to block an unwanted term.

One caveat remains: negative keywords don’t automatically cover the full universe of meaning-based expansions the same way positive matching can. If you need to block synonyms, singular/plural variants, or concept-adjacent wording, you may still need multiple negatives to fully close the door.

Tighten your structure so query matching has fewer ways to “misinterpret” you

If you find yourself adding negatives every week and the same kind of irrelevance keeps coming back, your structure is probably too blended. The fix is usually not “more negatives”—it’s clearer segmentation.

Build ad groups (or campaigns) around one primary intent theme and align the landing page tightly to that theme. When an ad group mixes multiple intents, the system uses “other keywords in the ad group” as a relevance signal, which can cause cross-pollination: a query that should have matched Ad Group A starts matching Ad Group B because the overall theme becomes fuzzy.

Also be careful with extremely broad landing pages. Broad match can use landing page content as a matching signal; if your page is a catch-all with lots of unrelated services, you’re essentially telling the system you’re relevant to a wider set of searches.

Balance match types with bidding strategy (broad match is not “bad,” but it needs the right guardrails)

Broad match can be highly effective, especially when paired with Smart Bidding, because the bidding system can adjust bids auction-by-auction based on conversion likelihood. But broad match without strong conversion signals, weak tracking, or unclear segmentation can feel like “spray and pray.”

If you’re seeing irrelevance spike after going broader, you have three practical levers: narrow the match types (shift more coverage to phrase/exact), strengthen exclusions, and improve the signals that guide matching (ad group theme clarity, landing page alignment, and conversion tracking quality). Often the best solution is not an extreme move in any single direction, but a controlled testing approach where you isolate broad match into its own campaign or tightly-themed ad groups so you can measure it cleanly.

Use brand controls when “irrelevant” really means “wrong brand traffic”

Sometimes “irrelevant” isn’t about the category—it’s about showing on competitor brands, resellers, subsidiaries, or brand-adjacent searches you don’t want. In those cases, brand exclusions can be a cleaner solution than trying to negative out dozens of brand variations.

Be aware of a UI/process change: starting May 27, 2025, brand exclusions for Search campaigns began upgrading into the AI Max experience for brand settings. In other words, if you’re managing brand exclusions in Search, you may now find those controls inside the AI Max brand panel depending on your campaign’s setup and upgrade status.

A simple weekly workflow that keeps irrelevant terms under control

You don’t need to obsess daily, but you do need a cadence. Here’s the routine I’ve used for years to keep accounts clean without over-blocking growth:

• Weekly: Review Search terms report filtered to high spend / low conversions, and add exclusions for “definitely irrelevant” intent.
• Weekly: Review Search terms insights to catch drifting categories that may not be fully visible at the query level.
• Biweekly: Audit the top ad groups/campaigns generating irrelevant terms and tighten theme alignment (keywords, ads, and landing page).
• Monthly: Consolidate negatives into reusable lists (including account-level negatives where appropriate) so you’re not rebuilding the same protections repeatedly.

If you apply this approach, you’ll quickly answer your original question with evidence: you’ll know you’re bidding on too many irrelevant terms when your spend is flowing into “definitely irrelevant” intent buckets—and you’ll know exactly which match behaviors, campaign types, or structural signals are responsible, so you can fix the cause instead of playing whack-a-mole.

If your Google Ads account shows healthy impressions but business results stay flat, CTR declines while spend rises, or conversions come from a small cluster of queries while many others burn budget, that’s often a sign you’re matching to too many irrelevant or low-intent searches; Blobr can help you turn that diagnostic work into a repeatable workflow by connecting to your account and using agents like the Negative Keywords Finder (to review recent search terms or Performance Max themes and suggest negative candidates with context) and the Negative Keywords Brainstormer (to proactively generate “never relevant” themes before they leak spend), so you can keep refining match behavior, structure, and exclusions without living in the Search terms report every week.