Spending less · 5 min read
The cheapest thing you can do in your first week
New advertisers lose a surprising share of their first month's budget to searches that were never going to buy. Blocking them takes about twenty minutes.
When you advertise on Google, you don't choose the searches you appear for — you choose keywords, and Google decides which searches are close enough. That gap is where new advertisers lose money.
What actually happens
You're a plumber. You bid on 'boiler repair'. Google shows your ad to someone searching 'boiler repair how to diy', another searching 'boiler repair apprenticeship salary', and a third searching 'free boiler repair grant'. All three click. None will ever hire you. You paid for all three.
Negative keywords
A negative keyword tells Google: never show me for searches containing this word. Add 'diy' and every search containing it disappears from your bill. The whole mechanism takes minutes to use and most owners have never touched it.
The list to start with
Four categories cover most early waste. People trying to do it themselves: diy, how to, tutorial, guide. People looking for work: job, jobs, salary, career, apprenticeship, hiring. People who won't pay: free, cheap, grant, discount. People studying: course, training, certification, school.
Add those before your first click. You will still find new ones — but you'll have blocked the most common drains before they cost you anything.
Then check what you actually got
Every ad platform shows the real searches that triggered your ads. In Google Ads it's the search terms report. Read it weekly for the first month. You'll find things nobody could have predicted — a competitor's brand name, a similarly-named product, a town you don't serve.
This is the highest-value twenty minutes in early advertising. It costs nothing, it compounds, and no clever bidding strategy will save you from paying for the wrong audience.