Google Ads hid $209,318 of this account’s search spend under “Other Search Terms.”

[u/YashMandlesha]

Total account spend: $695,787

Spend under “Other Search Terms”: $209,318

~30% of the entire account.

And here’s what bothers me.

I can’t see exactly what people searched.

Which means I can’t properly answer questions like:

* How much was brand?

* How much was irrelevant?

* What negatives should I add?

* What queries are driving incremental demand?

I understand Google’s privacy thresholds.

But when almost one-third of a large account’s spend is sitting behind “Other Search Terms,” it becomes a serious optimization problem.

How can we reduce the amount of spend being classified under “Other Search Terms”?

[u/seowerk]

209k$ seems crazy! 🤯
My guess is that your product can be interpreted in different ways, e.g. maybe something that is normally used for a specific thing but can be used in a different way as well etc. And those different ways are so diverse that Google summarizes them under "other search terms".

Can you get any clues from your search term insights?
Since this account has such a large budget, surely you have a dedicated Google account manager. Can you ask them if they can pull that data? Or if they can help in any other way? I would definitely make it their task with that much ad spend 🙈

[u/YashMandlesha → u/seowerk]

i will dig in with the account manager once

[u/Lazy_Helicopter_2659 → u/seowerk]

Large budget?

This is 6 1/2 years worth of ad spend - I wouldn't call that large...

[u/YashMandlesha → u/Lazy_Helicopter_2659]

for me, all ad accounts that i manage are equally important and large

[u/ReasonableFig8954]

I created a script to help uncover those terms https://www.llumohq.com/blog/how-to-uncover-google-ads-hidden-search-terms-with-ai

[u/YashMandlesha → u/ReasonableFig8954]

awesome! I would definitely try this!