Negative Keyword Savings Calculator

Negative keywords stop your ads from showing on searches you don't want to pay for, but it's hard to know if the cleanup work is worth it without a rough dollar figure. This calculator turns a wasted-spend percentage, the kind you'd pull from a Search Terms Report review, into a monthly and annual number.

Where the wasted-spend percentage comes from

Google Ads' Search Terms Report shows the exact queries that triggered your ads. Sorting that report by cost and scanning down the list usually surfaces a cluster of searches with no real intent to buy, an unrelated product line, a job seeker, a competitor's brand name, or plain irrelevant terms. Add up the cost of those rows, divide by total spend for the period, and that percentage is what goes into this calculator.

Why this percentage varies so much between accounts

Broad match keywords, newer accounts with thin negative keyword lists, and highly competitive or ambiguous terms all tend to push wasted spend higher. Mature accounts on tightly scoped phrase or exact match, reviewed regularly, tend to sit lower. There's no single benchmark that applies across industries, which is why this tool asks for your own estimate rather than assuming one.

Turning the estimate into a review habit

A wasted-spend estimate is only useful if it leads to a recurring habit, most PPC managers review the Search Terms Report weekly or every two weeks and add negative keywords as patterns show up, rather than doing a single one-time cleanup. The extra-conversions figure above is meant to make the case for that time investment concrete: it's the same budget, just reallocated toward terms that already convert.