There's a report in Google Ads that most Shopify merchants never check. It's called the Search Terms report, and it shows you the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad. Not the keywords you're bidding on, but what people actually searched for.
The gap between those two things is where a lot of money quietly disappears.
Keywords vs search terms: the difference that costs you
When you set up a Google Ads campaign, you choose keywords to target. If you sell organic baby clothing, you might bid on "organic baby onesie" or "natural cotton baby clothes."
But Google doesn't just show your ad for exact matches. Depending on your match type settings, Google will show your ad for queries it considers related. That "organic baby onesie" keyword might trigger your ad for searches like:
- "organic baby onesie pattern" (someone looking to sew their own)
- "baby onesie size chart" (information seeking, not buying)
- "cheap baby onesie bulk" (looking for wholesale, not your premium product)
- "organic cotton adult onesie" (different product entirely)
Every one of those clicks costs you money. None of them are likely to convert.
How much waste are we talking about?
The typical Google Ads account has 15 to 30% of its search traffic coming from irrelevant or low-intent queries. For a Shopify merchant spending $3,000/month on search ads, that's $450 to $900/month in clicks that have little to no chance of converting.
Over a year, that's $5,400 to $10,800 in wasted spend. Enough to fund your entire marketing tool stack, hire a contractor, or reinvest in campaigns that actually work.
The challenge is that the waste isn't obvious. It's not one big expense; it's hundreds of small, individually cheap clicks that collectively drain your budget. Most merchants don't notice because each click only costs $0.50 to $2.00. But volume makes it significant.
The negative keyword solution
The fix is straightforward: negative keywords. When you add a negative keyword, you're telling Google "never show my ad when someone searches for this term."
For the organic baby clothing example:
- Add "pattern" as a negative to exclude DIY sewers.
- Add "size chart" to exclude information seekers.
- Add "bulk" and "wholesale" to exclude B2B queries.
- Add "adult" to exclude the wrong product category.
This is not a one-time setup. New irrelevant search terms appear constantly as Google expands its matching. A query that wasn't triggering your ads last month might start showing up this month because Google's algorithm decided it was "related enough."
Why most merchants don't do this
The Search Terms report is not a fun report to review. For an account with 50 to 100 active keywords, you might have hundreds or thousands of search term entries to review each month. Each one requires a judgment call: is this relevant or not?
Most merchants have better things to do than spend an hour every week scrolling through search queries. So the report goes unchecked. The waste accumulates. The ROAS slowly degrades. And the merchant blames "Google Ads isn't working for my store" when the real problem is unmanaged search term bleed.
The compounding problem
Here's what makes search term waste particularly damaging: it affects Smart Bidding.
Google's automated bidding strategies (Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions) learn from your conversion data. When irrelevant clicks are flowing in alongside legitimate ones, the algorithm gets noisy data. It might bid up on query patterns that include a mix of good and bad traffic, because it can't always distinguish between a click that converted because the product was right and a click that didn't convert because the query was irrelevant.
Clean search term data gives Smart Bidding better signals, which gives you better results, which gives you more conversion data, which makes Smart Bidding even smarter. The opposite is also true: dirty data leads to poor bidding leads to worse results.
What good search term hygiene looks like
Weekly (ideal): Review the Search Terms report for the past 7 days. Add obvious negatives. Look for patterns (e.g., if "DIY" or "free" keeps appearing, add those as campaign-level negatives).
Monthly (minimum): Review the full month's search terms. Sort by cost to find the most expensive irrelevant queries first. Update your negative keyword lists.
Quarterly: Review your negative keyword lists themselves. Sometimes you'll find you've been too aggressive with negatives and are blocking legitimate queries.
Shared negative keyword lists: Create lists at the account level rather than adding negatives to individual campaigns. "Competitor names," "DIY terms," "wholesale/bulk terms" can be managed as shared lists applied across all campaigns.
How oddly handles this
oddly's search term intelligence monitors your Search Terms report automatically. Instead of you scrolling through thousands of entries, oddly identifies the queries most likely to be waste based on:
- Low or zero conversion rates despite significant click volume.
- Semantic distance from your product catalogue (using your Shopify product data as the reference).
- Patterns across your account (if "free" or "DIY" keeps appearing, oddly flags the pattern, not just individual terms).
For Nudge tier users, oddly surfaces the waste with a recommended action: "Add these 12 terms as negatives. Estimated monthly savings: $180." For Steer tier users with automation enabled, oddly can add the negatives directly after your approval.
Start with the quick win
If you haven't checked your Search Terms report recently, do this right now:
- Go to
Google Ads > Campaigns > select a campaign > Search terms. - Sort by "Cost" (highest first).
- Look at the top 20 most expensive search terms.
- Ask yourself: "Would I have chosen to bid on this query?"
- For every "no," add it as a negative keyword.
This five-minute exercise often saves more money than any bid adjustment or ad copy change you could make. It's the single highest-ROI task in Google Ads management, and it's the one that gets done least often.