Exclude informational search terms without purchase intent

What it flagsSearch terms that want to know something, not buy something

Informational search terms are searches where someone wants to look something up or learn about it, not buy anything. Think of terms starting with what, how, why, or who, or markers like free, course, jobs, guide, manual, review, and experiences. That visitor might click your ad, but is nowhere near the buying stage yet.

AdBuilder reads your search terms report and aggregates the numbers per search term and campaign. Search terms that cost clicks and money, deliver zero conversions over the measurement period, and contain a recognizable info word end up in this recommendation. That gives you a single list of informational search terms eating your budget without results.

Why it mattersInfo traffic costs money and delivers nothing in a sales campaign

In a campaign aimed at sales or leads, you pay for every click. Traffic with pure info intent barely converts there by definition: someone searching for how does a heat pump work wants to understand first, not order. One such term is small change, but together those wasted clicks add up fast.

Excluding these search terms as negative keywords stops the waste and keeps your budget for keywords with purchase intent. It also prevents broad and phrase match types from repeatedly picking up these info variants. It's one of the most direct ways to get your negative keywords in order.

How it worksThe actual thresholds behind this recommendation

AdBuilder looks at each search term (aggregated per search term and campaign) over the chosen lookback window. A term makes the list if it meets all the conditions below. The heaviest one is the cost condition: it ensures we only flag terms that spent real money, measured against what a conversion normally costs in this account.

The lookback window is dynamic and scales with your account volume: 30 days for high volume (at least 100 conversions in 30 days), otherwise 60 days (at least 30 conversions) or 90 days. The window ends 3 days before today, as a buffer for conversions that come in with a delay. Conversion tracking must be on: without tracking we can't judge 0 conversions, so only the click and CTR review variant runs, not this recommendation.

When you open the recommendation, AdBuilder refines the list once more and removes borderline cases with purchase intent, for example request a free quote, which is commercial despite the word free.

• No result: 0 conversions and no conversion value in the measurement period.
• Enough traffic: at least 5 clicks, so that 0 conversions is meaningful.
• Cost high enough: with conversion data, at least the higher of the floor and 2x the reference CPA. The floor is EUR 25 for medium and high volume accounts and EUR 10 for low volume accounts. Without a reference CPA, at least EUR 5 applies (scaled with the window) plus 5 clicks.
• Info intent: the search term contains a question or info word from a multilingual list (what, how, why, free, course, jobs, guide, review, meaning, example, manual, pdf, wiki, and more, in all languages AdBuilder supports).
• No double counting: terms already claimed by the wasteful search terms recommendation are left out here.
• Own keyword protected: if the term is your own active keyword in the same ad group, we don't suggest a negative (that's a pause decision, not an exclusion).

What you can doExclude as a negative keyword, at your level

You see up to the 20 costliest search terms, sorted by cost, plus the info words that recur across multiple search terms. A recurring word like that can be excluded broadly in one go instead of each variant separately. You choose what to exclude and at which level; mark a term as not applicable if it's actually relevant to you.

Everything you add is reversible: any exclusion created (and any new list link) can be removed later by AdBuilder.

• Choose which search terms or broad info words to exclude.
• Choose the level: only the campaign where the term appeared, all Search campaigns (account-wide), or a shared exclusion list (existing or new, automatically linked to your Search campaigns).
• Choose the match type of the negative keyword per search term or word.
• Undo the exclusion if you change your mind.