This is part of a series on the Low Data Google Ads Optimisation Framework. Start with the flagship post for the full picture.
I’m from Yorkshire. We have a reputation for being “careful” with money — I prefer to think of it as protecting the budget. And when it comes to low data Google Ads accounts, protecting the budget isn’t just good housekeeping. It’s a core part of how you make the account perform.
When budgets are modest and conversion volumes are low, every wasted click matters more than it would on a larger account. Money spent on the wrong searches isn’t just inefficient — it actively starves your good keywords of the data they need to learn and optimise. Wasted spend and wasted signal at the same time.
Here’s how I think about budget protection for low data accounts.
Google will never tell you when you’re wasting money
This is worth saying plainly, because it shapes how you need to approach this.
When I was putting together my HeroConf talk, I found myself thinking: why isn’t negative keyword management part of the standard campaign setup process? Why doesn’t Google prompt you to build a negative list before you launch?
The answer, when you think about it, is obvious. Adding negative keywords benefits you as the advertiser. It does nothing for Google. You’ll never see a recommendation in your optimisation score saying “We’ve noticed a significant portion of your budget is being spent on irrelevant searches — consider adding these as negatives.” Google’s recommendations tend to push spend up, not down.
That means the responsibility falls entirely on us. And it means being proactive rather than reactive — building your negative keyword list before the campaign goes live, not waiting until you’ve burned through budget finding out what doesn’t work.
Negatives from day one
A solid negative keyword list is one of the highest-value things you can do before launching any campaign, and it costs nothing except time.
Start with the obvious exclusions for your industry — terms that will almost certainly trigger irrelevant searches. “Free,” “jobs,” “salary,” “course,” “training,” “DIY,” “how to” — depending on what you’re advertising, a good chunk of these will apply from the outset. You don’t need to wait for them to appear in your search terms report to know they’re coming.
AI can actually help here. I know we’re all a bit tired of hearing about AI, but for the genuinely mundane task of generating an initial negative keyword list, it’s useful. Give it context about your client’s business and what they don’t offer, and it can produce a solid starting list in seconds. Just make sure you sense-check it — and pay close attention to match types.
Which brings me to something that’s easy to get wrong.
Match types matter — a lot
Negative keywords don’t behave the same way as regular keywords. The implications of getting match types wrong can be significant.
I was recently brought in to look at a shopping campaign where traffic had dropped overnight with no obvious explanation. When I checked the change history, I found the culprit immediately: someone had added the word “laptop” as a broad match negative. The account sold laptop bags and cases. The negative was so broad it was blocking the vast majority of relevant searches from coming through.
It’s an easy mistake to make, but a costly one. When you add negatives — whether you’ve built the list yourself or used AI to help — review them carefully:
- Broad match negatives block any search containing that word in any order. Use with care.
- Phrase match negatives block searches containing that exact phrase.
- Exact match negatives block only that precise search term.
For most negative keywords, phrase or exact match gives you the control you actually want. Broad match negatives are powerful and sometimes the right call — but they need to be chosen deliberately, not added carelessly.
Avoid premature broad match on your keywords too
While we’re on the topic of match types: be careful about rushing into broad match on your positive keywords, particularly for niche B2B accounts where CPCs are already high.
I know broad match has improved. I have accounts that perform well on it, and I’ll freely admit that’s occasionally frustrating to reconcile with the instincts I’ve built up over 20 years. But the key word is premature. Broad match needs data to work well. Without enough conversion history, Google doesn’t have the context it needs to make sensible decisions about which searches to match you to — and the results can be very expensive.
A client of mine — a specialist HR consultancy — were bidding on “employment law” as a broad match keyword. One of the searches it triggered was someone researching their own redundancy rights. The user clicked the ad. That click cost £22 — nearly half the client’s daily budget, gone on someone who was never going to hire an HR consultant.
We moved back to exact match. The wasted spend stopped immediately.
Broad match can earn its place in a low data account eventually, but let the data justify it. Start tight, and loosen up only when you have enough conversion signal to keep Google pointed in the right direction.
Don’t pay for the might-bes and maybes
One pattern I see regularly: clients bidding on keywords that are adjacent to their service, on the logic that there might be some crossover.
The garage door repair client I mentioned in an earlier post is a good example. He was spending heavily on searches like “buy new garage door” and “garage door prices” — neither of which related to his actual service (repairs only, no new doors). His reasoning was that someone searching for a new door might have a broken one and could be persuaded to repair it instead. Possible in theory. Expensive and non-converting in practice.
The same logic applies to competitor keyword bidding. Sometimes it makes sense — but for a low data account with a modest budget, launching a competitor campaign means creating another campaign, splitting your budget further, and often paying high CPCs for clicks that convert poorly. If your competitor is ten times your size with ten times your budget, they can sustain that approach. You probably can’t.
The discipline here is distinguishing between the searches where someone will definitely need what you offer, and the searches where they might possibly need it if you can just convince them. For low data accounts, spend on the definitely-wills. Leave the might-bes alone.
Query filtering as a weekly habit
One practical technique that helps keep budget protection manageable: use the filter function in your search terms report to surface potential waste more efficiently.
Rather than manually reviewing every search term, filter for terms that don’t contain your core product or service descriptors. If you’re selling accounting software, filter out terms containing “accounting,” “software,” “finance,” “invoicing” and similar — what’s left is a shortlist of searches that are less likely to be relevant, and therefore worth reviewing for negatives.
It’s a quicker way to work through higher-volume accounts, and it keeps your weekly hygiene manageable without turning it into a two-hour task.
The mindset: every pound needs to earn its place
On a large account, some wasted spend is almost inevitable and acceptable — the volume of good conversions more than compensates. On a low data account, you don’t have that buffer.
Every pound that goes on an irrelevant click is a pound that didn’t go towards a conversion. More than that, it’s a click that muddies the data Google is trying to learn from. You’re making the signal problem worse.
Protect the budget like you’d protect your own money. Build your negative list before you launch. Review your search terms weekly. Be deliberate with match types. Don’t bid on searches you can’t realistically convert.
The budget you protect is the signal you preserve.
Next in the series: Prioritise Big Impact Changes — why small optimisations don’t move the needle on low data accounts, and where to focus your energy instead.
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