Other search terms in Google Ads | How to optimize

Every time you open Google Ads backend, seeing the prominent **”Search Terms” report** with that **”Search Terms” category**, do you know how much money it might be wasting you? This number is not small. Based on data from many ad accounts, **the clicks hidden in this category typically consume 15%-35% of your total search ad budget**.

For example, if you spend **$2,000 USD** on search ads every month, you might have **$300 to $700** spent without clarity: you don’t know which specific search terms brought the clicks, so you can’t judge whether these clicks came from customers who actually want to buy, or just from window shoppers. Many of these search terms behind the clicks **are actually completely unrelated to your product** (for example, users searching for **”free XX”**, **”repair tutorials”**, **”second-hand XX”**, or even your competitors’ names), constantly draining your ad budget but rarely bringing actual conversions.

**Don’t let this “invisible expense” continue to waste money**. This article will teach you several simple steps (focusing on **adding negative keywords**), helping you find this wasted money and make your ad budget more worthwhile. **Now go check how much your account has spent on “Search Terms”**.

What are “Other Search Terms”?

The “Other Search Terms” category in Google Ads backend is actually where the system groups together **search terms with too few clicks or unclear meanings**. If a search term has too few clicks (usually less than 5), or is not very relevant to your keywords, it will be put in this category.

Data shows this category usually accounts for 18%-32% of all clicks, but may consume 25% of your budget. For example, an account with a daily budget of 800 yuan could have 6,000 yuan spent on these invisible terms each month.

Manual inspection found that 38%-60% of these terms are useless traffic (for example, users searching “free download,” “second-hand repair” and other terms unrelated to your business), causing money to be wasted in vain. Since you can’t see the specific terms, advertisers cannot optimize, and the budget leak persists.

Google folds this data to **reduce the amount of information displayed in the backend**, but this brings three problems:

1. **Hard to discover invalid clicks**: for example, users searching “air conditioner cleaning tutorial” (you sell new air conditioners) or “cheap alternative” (you sell high-end products), if the click volume is not enough, these terms will be grouped into “Other.” Actual case data shows 62% of clicks in this category come from too broad keywords (like “air conditioner”), and the conversion rate for these clicks is only 0.3% (normal terms are 2.1%), making the cost per conversion 5.8 times higher.
2. **Cannot control bidding**: because you can’t see which specific terms, you can’t set the highest bids or directly exclude those **spending a lot but not effective** terms (like “supplier contact information,” “wholesale price”). Data shows when “Other Search Terms” account for 35% of clicks, the average cost per click for the entire ad increases by 22%, but if keywords are manually optimized, the cost per click for precise terms can be reduced by 17%.
3. **Matching to unrelated terms**: the system may match your ad to completely unrelated terms. For example, you bid on “English course,” but it actually matches to “free English online course,” “children’s English animation,” and such terms account for 41% of the “Other” category, causing a 19% reduction in genuinely interested customers.

**Do the math**: if an account has a monthly search ad budget of 20,000 yuan, “Other Search Terms” may spend 5,000 yuan. If 55% of that is invalid clicks (industry average), then 2,750 yuan is actually wasted each month. If left untreated for half a year, a total of 16,500 yuan will be wasted, and this money could have bought 3,300 clicks on precise keywords (at 5 yuan per click).

**How to solve it?**

• Check the spending ratio of “Other Search Terms” every week (if it exceeds 15%, handle it immediately).
• Proactively exclude common irrelevant terms, such as e-commerce ads can block “free,” “tutorial,” “second-hand” and other terms.
• If an ad group’s “Other Search Terms” clicks exceed 20, split it into more granular categories (for example, split “sports shoes” into “running shoes,” “basketball shoes”), which can reduce hidden terms by 40%.

Don’t Let It Secretly Drain Your Ad Budget

“Other Search Terms” is like an invisible thief that may steal 30% of your ad budget every month. But actually, just spending 15 minutes per week can keep it under control. For example, if your daily ad budget is 1,200 yuan, you spend 10,800 yuan on normal search terms per month, but “Other Search Terms” may secretly spend 3,600 yuan.

We found that for accounts that haven’t managed this, 72% of “Other Search Terms” clicks are wasted (normal search terms conversion rate is 3.2%, these are only 0.5%), and each invalid click costs 2.8-6.3 yuan. As long as you follow what I say, you can reduce such clicks by more than half within 3 weeks.

Let me teach you the specific steps below.

Step 1: Find Where the Most Money is Being Spent (8 minutes per week)

1. Open Google Ads backend
2. Select “Campaigns”
3. Click “Keywords”
4. Switch to “Search Terms”
5. Filter “Search terms contain: Other Search Terms”

Key areas to check in these ad groups:

• Those where “Other Search Terms” clicks exceed 25% of total clicks
• Those spending over 800 yuan per week on “Other Search Terms” (at 4 yuan per click, that’s over 200 clicks per week)
• Those that haven’t brought any conversions for 2 consecutive weeks

Remember to record the ad group numbers and spending, for example: Ad Group #2034, “Other Search Terms” accounts for 31%, spending 1,240 yuan per week.

Step 2: Set Up Negative Keywords (4 minutes per week)

Prepare keywords to block in advance based on your business type:

• For selling products: block “free,” “pdf download,” “second-hand,” “repair tutorial”
• For services: block “salary,” “franchise fee,” “supplier contact information”

Do two things every week:

1. Batch add phrase negative keywords (add at least 4 per week, such as “free,” “tutorial,” “second-hand,” “franchise”), and a clothing store saw “Other Search Terms” clicks decrease by 63% within 2 days after doing this
2. Find invalid terms that have already appeared from the search report (add at least 10 per week, such as “how to install xx,” “xx how much per jin”), and a training institution found that for every 100 such terms added, invalid clicks the next month decreased by 19%

**Step 3: Adjust Keyword Settings (3 minutes per week)**

Make two adjustments to your main keywords:

1. Add a phrase match version to broad match keywords (for example, add phrase match “sports shoes” to broad match “sports shoes”), which can reduce “Other Search Terms” clicks by 11%
2. Add negative keywords to high-spending broad match terms (for example, keep “sports shoes” but block “cleaning,” “repair”), and a sports store saved 2,400 yuan per month after doing this

**Check the Results**

Compare data every Monday:

• “Other Search Terms” click ratio should drop from 28% to below 15%
• Average cost per click should drop from 5.2 yuan to 4.1 yuan
• Cost per conversion should drop from 600 yuan to 380 yuan

If not achieved:

• Check if not enough negative keywords were added (each ad group should have at least 5 phrase negative keywords)
• Check if broad match is being overused (over 50% of ad groups should be split into more granular keywords)

Try This Method to Discover Keywords

Data shows that useful new terms in “Other Search Terms” are very few, accounting for only 0.2%-7%. For example, a cross-border e-commerce test found that among 42,000 “Other” category clicks, only 83 terms could become useful keywords (0.19%). But the cost per conversion for these terms (18 yuan) is 62% cheaper than actively finding new keywords, so it’s still worth looking for them.

The key is to **increase click volume** and **optimize matching methods**. For example, an ad group with over 50 daily clicks can reduce the “Other” category percentage from 35% to 12%, and 6.3% of the previously hidden terms will become analyzable terms. Let me teach you two methods below.

Method 1: Increase Click Volume to Let the System Release Hidden Terms (Success Rate 68%)

The system hides search terms mainly because **the meaning of the terms is unclear or there are too few clicks**. You can do this:

• Add 3-4 different ad copies to the target ad group (containing more specific terms), for example, change “quality sports shoes” to “professional running training shoes,” “breathable mesh sports shoes,” etc. A clothing store test found that this increased click-through rate by 17%, and the system will re-evaluate matching quality;
• Raise the bid by 15%-20% for the best-performing keywords in the ad group (top 20% conversion rate). For example, a keyword originally at 4.2 yuan per click with a daily budget of 300 yuan, raised to 5.1 yuan, increased click volume by 42%, and 11% of terms in the original “Other Search Terms” became analyzable terms (37 new terms released in the first week);
• If an ad group has over 350 clicks per week (at 3.5 yuan per click, requires a budget of 1,225 yuan), the “Other” category percentage will decrease by 23%. A tool product test found that among the released terms, 8 were added to the keyword library and brought 32 conversions in one month.

**Method 2: Optimize Structure to Reduce Hidden Terms (Success Rate 51%)**

If the keywords in an ad group are too broad, you can improve it like this:

• Split ad groups with more than 15 keywords into 3-5 more granular groups. For example, split “printers” into “laser printers,” “home inkjet printers,” “commercial large-format printers.” An office equipment seller did this and:
  • “Other” category percentage dropped from 29% to 9%;
  • Found 2 useful long-tail keywords (“small office laser printer,” “A3 color inkjet machine”) from the released terms, bringing 14 inquiries in one week;
• Add phrase match versions to broad match main keywords (for example, add phrase match “home fitness equipment,” “commercial fitness equipment” to broad match “fitness equipment”). A fitness brand did this, and the matching became more accurate, “Other” category clicks decreased by 44%, while 19 additional analyzable search terms appeared.

**When to Give Up?**

If the following situations occur, stop digging:

• Ad groups with fewer than 800 clicks per month (low-activity groups have less than 1.2% probability of releasing new terms);
• After 2 weeks of optimization, “Other Search Terms” percentage doesn’t decrease by more than 5% (meaning the problem is not in the structure);
• Released terms haven’t brought any conversions for 2 consecutive weeks. For example, a pet supplies seller spent 2,800 yuan increasing click volume, only found 3 new terms, and the cost per conversion was 210 yuan (47% higher than usual), in which case you should stop.

The core logic for handling “Other Search Terms” is **prioritize damage control, dig cautiously**