{"id":943,"date":"2026-08-03T07:16:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T11:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/google-ads-wasted-spend-concentration"},"modified":"2026-08-03T07:36:19","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T11:36:19","slug":"google-ads-wasted-spend-concentration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/google-ads-wasted-spend-concentration","title":{"rendered":"Half Your Wasted Google Ads Spend Sits in 10% of Your Search Terms"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"tldr\">\n<p><strong>The short version.<\/strong> We already published how much Google Ads money goes to search terms that never convert. This is the follow-up question: where does it sit. Across <strong>32 accounts and 5.2 million paid search terms with zero conversions<\/strong> in the Doctor Ads Profit Forensics portfolio, the <strong>most expensive 10% of those terms hold a median 48.8% of the wasted spend<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Concentration is steady, not a quirk of one account. The middle half of accounts runs from 45.8% to 58.9%, and dropping any single account moves the median only between 48.5% and 49.2%.<\/li>\n<li>Now the part that ruins the easy conclusion. That top tenth is a median of <strong>13,806 search terms<\/strong>, because the median account carries 138,066 terms that converted nothing. Concentrated in money, enormous in count.<\/li>\n<li>These are managed accounts over each account&#8217;s own reporting window, mostly September 2024 to January 2025. Terms that converted after the window closed are counted as waste here.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Where the waste actually sits<\/h2>\n<p>In <a href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/how-much-google-ads-budget-is-wasted\">how much Google Ads budget is wasted<\/a> we put a size on the problem and said something specific about its shape: the waste is not concentrated in any one query. That is true, and it is also the kind of true statement that stops an audit too early. It is not one query. It is not spread evenly either.<\/p>\n<p>Order every zero-conversion <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2472708\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">search term<\/a> in an account from most expensive to least, then walk down the list. In the median account you reach <strong>48.8% of the wasted spend<\/strong> after the first 10% of terms. Take only the top 5% and you already hold 34.6%. Widen to 20% and you hold 66.2%.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"chart\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/waste-chart1-concentration.png\" alt=\"Concentration curve across 32 Google Ads accounts showing the cumulative share of zero-conversion spend against the share of zero-conversion search terms ordered most expensive first. The median account reaches 48.8 percent of its wasted spend within the top 10 percent of terms, against 10 percent if waste were spread evenly.\" title=\"\"><figcaption>Cumulative share of an account&#8217;s zero-conversion spend. The dashed line is what an evenly spread waste would look like. 32 accounts, 5.2M terms.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The comparison worth holding is the dashed line. If waste were spread evenly across terms, the top tenth would hold a tenth. It holds close to half.<\/p>\n<p>Two checks before that number travels anywhere. Leaving any single account out of the portfolio moves the median only between <strong>48.5% and 49.2%<\/strong>, so no one account is carrying it. And accounts with long term lists show the same concentration as accounts with short ones (48.8% against 49.8%), so this is not an artifact of some accounts simply having a longer tail.<\/p>\n<h2>That tenth is still 13,806 queries<\/h2>\n<p>Here is where the usual reading breaks. &#8220;Concentrated&#8221; normally implies &#8220;small&#8221;, and therefore &#8220;fixable in an afternoon&#8221;. Not here.<\/p>\n<p>The median account in this portfolio carries <strong>138,066 search terms that spent money and returned no conversion<\/strong>. Ten percent of that is <strong>13,806 terms<\/strong>. That is the head of the distribution, the part holding half the waste, and it is still five figures of individual queries.<\/p>\n<p>So both of these are true at once, and most audits only carry the first one home:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Half your wasted spend is reachable through a small fraction of your terms.<\/li>\n<li>That fraction is far too large to work through by hand, one <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2453972\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">negative keyword<\/a> at a time.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This puts a size on the point the earlier study made, without claiming to explain it. The reachable part of the waste is measured in thousands of rows; a hand-maintained list is measured in dozens. Whether that gap is what defeats any particular account&#8217;s list is not something this slice can tell you, and it is worth measuring in your own before assuming it.<\/p>\n<h2>What to do with a head this size<\/h2>\n<p>The finding does not tell you what to exclude. It tells you what shape of work actually matches the problem.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>Sort by cost, not by count.<\/strong> Open the search terms report, filter to zero conversions, sort by spend descending. The first screen is worth more than the next hundred. Anyone auditing alphabetically or by impressions is working the wrong end of the curve.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Work in patterns, not in terms.<\/strong> With five figures of rows in the head, the unit of work has to be a <a href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/broad-match-vs-exact-match-cost-per-conversion\">pattern that catches many terms at once<\/a>, not the individual query. That is a different job from maintaining a list.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Measure your own curve before you judge it.<\/strong> Take your zero-conversion terms, sort by cost, and check what share of the wasted spend your top 10% holds. If it is well under 45%, your waste is flatter than this portfolio&#8217;s and the head-first approach will pay you back less.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Do not read zero conversions as zero value.<\/strong> A term that converted nothing in a six-month window may still have assisted, and the export cannot see that. Treat the head as a list of candidates to examine, not a list to delete.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>What your own account cannot give you is the comparison: whether your curve is normal, whether your head is unusually heavy, and how much of it repeats across campaigns. Running that against a portfolio is what a <a href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/profit-forensics\">Profit Forensics examination<\/a> does.<\/p>\n<h2>When this does not apply<\/h2>\n<p><strong>Your account is small.<\/strong> With a few hundred zero-conversion terms rather than a hundred thousand, the head is genuinely small and a maintained list can keep up. The concentration still holds; the practical conclusion flips.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Your conversion window is long.<\/strong> Considered purchases that convert weeks later will show as zero-conversion terms inside a reporting window and inflate what looks like waste. The concentration shape survives this, the label &#8220;wasted&#8221; does not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You run mostly Performance Max or Shopping.<\/strong> This measures the search terms report. Where you get no term-level visibility, there is no curve to sort.<\/p>\n<div class=\"researcher-take\" style=\"border-left:4px solid #2fb073;background:#f6faf8;padding:1em 1.25em;margin:2em 0;border-radius:4px;\">\n<p style=\"margin:0 0 .5em;font-weight:700;font-size:.8em;letter-spacing:.05em;text-transform:uppercase;color:#2fb073;\">Researcher&#8217;s take<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin:0;font-size:1.03em;line-height:1.6;color:#0f1311;\">Two things are true here and most audits carry home only the first. Half the money sits in the first tenth of the list. That tenth is 13,806 rows in the median account. Read the first fact alone and you plan an afternoon with a spreadsheet. Read both and you plan a different unit of work: patterns that catch many terms at once. In the accounts I audit the ones with a genuinely small head are the small accounts, though that is my observation from auditing rather than a measurement from this slice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Key takeaways<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Across 32 accounts, the most expensive <strong>10% of zero-conversion search terms hold a median 48.8%<\/strong> of the wasted spend (middle half of accounts: 45.8% to 58.9%).<\/li>\n<li>The top 5% hold 34.6%; the top 20% hold 66.2%. Even spread would put the top 10% at 10%.<\/li>\n<li>The result survives leave-one-account-out (<strong>48.5% to 49.2%<\/strong>) and is not an artifact of list length.<\/li>\n<li>That top tenth is a median of <strong>13,806 terms<\/strong>, out of 138,066 zero-conversion terms in the median account. Concentrated in money, not in count.<\/li>\n<li>Sort by cost and work in patterns. A hand-maintained negative list cannot cover a head of that size.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Frequently asked questions<\/h2>\n<div class=\"faq-item\">\n<p class=\"faq-q\">Where is wasted spend concentrated in a Google Ads account?<\/p>\n<p>In the expensive head of the zero-conversion search terms. Across 32 accounts, the top 10% of those terms by cost held a median 48.8% of the wasted spend, against the 10% you would see if waste were spread evenly. The top 5% already held 34.6%.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"faq-item\">\n<p class=\"faq-q\">How many negative keywords would it take to cover the worst offenders?<\/p>\n<p>More than a list can hold. The top decile that carries half the waste is a median of 13,806 search terms per account, because the median account has 138,066 terms that spent and never converted. This is why the work has to be done in patterns rather than one term at a time.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"faq-item\">\n<p class=\"faq-q\">Does a search term with zero conversions mean the money was wasted?<\/p>\n<p>Not always, and this study cannot separate the two. A term can assist a conversion credited elsewhere, or convert after the reporting window closed. Treat the expensive head as a list of candidates to examine rather than a list to exclude on sight.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Method and sources<\/h2>\n<p>Figures come from a forensic analysis by Igor Ivitskiy of a managed portfolio of Google Ads accounts totalling $133M in spend. The population is every account with at least 20 paid search terms carrying zero conversions, deduplicated to one reporting window per account: 32 accounts and 5,244,638 zero-conversion terms, with windows mostly spanning September 2024 to January 2025. Counts are of exported search terms, and Google truncates the search terms report, so the tail is longer than any export shows and the head is measured against what was exported. For each account the zero-conversion terms are ordered by cost and the cumulative share of that account&#8217;s zero-conversion spend is measured at fixed cut points; the figures reported are medians across accounts, with the middle half shown as a range. The 10% cut point was fixed before the run, alongside 5% and 20% precisely so that the choice of threshold could not be tuned afterwards, and a kill condition was registered in advance: a median at or below 20% would have closed the topic. Robustness: leave-one-account-out moves the median between 48.5% and 49.2%, and splitting accounts by list length gives 48.8% against 49.8%, which rules out the concentration being an artifact of longer tails. In this narrower population the median account puts 29.0% of its paid search spend into terms that converted nothing; the portfolio-level figure and its caveats live in the earlier study, <a href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/how-much-google-ads-budget-is-wasted\">how much Google Ads budget is wasted<\/a>. This is a managed-agency portfolio with client self-selection, so it describes what these accounts contained rather than what any market must contain, and nothing here is a causal claim. Definitions follow Google&#8217;s documentation for the <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2472708\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">search terms report<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2453972\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">negative keywords<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2453976\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">keyword improvement<\/a>. Related reading from the same portfolio: <a href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/google-ads-auction-insights-sub-threshold-rivals\">half the competitors in your auction insights report have no impression share<\/a>, another case of a report that hides its own structure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The short version. We already published how much Google Ads money goes to search terms that never convert. This is the follow-up question: where does it sit. Across 32 accounts and 5.2 million paid search terms with zero conversions in the Doctor Ads Profit Forensics portfolio, the most expensive 10% of those terms hold a &#8230; <a title=\"Half Your Wasted Google Ads Spend Sits in 10% of Your Search Terms\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/google-ads-wasted-spend-concentration\" aria-label=\"Read more about Half Your Wasted Google Ads Spend Sits in 10% of Your Search Terms\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":942,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wasted-spend","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":949,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943\/revisions\/949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedoctorads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}