Negative Keywords Auto-Sync

Block wasted spend by automatically adding low-converting search terms as negatives

Google Ads integration that identifies search terms with zero conversions, high clicks, and high spend, then adds them as negative keywords to prevent future waste. Cuts irrelevant traffic in days, not weeks.

Every Monday at 8:00 AM, Nora pulls the search terms report across all active Google Ads campaigns for the past seven days. It filters the data to identify search terms generating high click volume with zero conversions and a high cost-per-click. Nora then adds these qualifying terms as negative keywords at the campaign level to prevent future matches.

The marketing manager receives a weekly summary in their chat channel detailing the newly blocked terms and the estimated cost saved. They review this list to catch any terms that might hold value for brand awareness. If they spot a term that should remain active, they tell Nora to remove the negative keyword. Nora updates the account and learns not to flag that specific term again.

Runs weekly on monday at 8:00 am using Google Ads, run by your Marketing Manager.

How it works

1. Pull weekly search report — At 8:00 AM on Monday, Nora connects to the Google Ads API and requests the search terms report for the previous seven days. It gathers click, impression, and conversion data for every term that triggered an ad.
2. Identify high cost terms — Nora scans the report for terms that consumed budget without generating results. It isolates search queries with zero conversions and filters them based on click volume and cost-per-click thresholds to find the clear outliers.
3. Handle ambiguous search intent — If a search term has zero conversions but falls just below the click threshold, Nora leaves it alone. It waits for another week of data to accumulate rather than prematurely blocking a term suffering from a temporary dip.
4. Add negative keywords — For the clear outliers, Nora sends a mutate request to the Google Ads API. It adds these terms as negative keywords at the campaign level, stopping your ads from showing for those specific searches.
5. Send weekly performance summary — Nora generates a summary report and sends it to the designated channel. The message lists the exact search terms blocked, the campaigns affected, and the total spend those terms consumed over the past week.

What this replaces

A marketer downloads the search terms report from the Google Ads console and exports it to a spreadsheet. They sort by cost and filter out rows with conversions. They manually review the high-spend terms, copy the irrelevant ones, navigate back to the negative keywords list, and paste them in.

• Download search terms report for the past week
• Filter spreadsheet for zero conversions and high spend
• Copy irrelevant terms to clipboard
• Paste terms into the campaign negative keyword list

Rough estimate rather than a measured figure: about 45 minutes a week, based on reviewing 200-300 search terms and manually applying 15-20 negative keywords across multiple campaigns.

What it needs to run

Accounts and plans

• Active Google Ads account
• Existing campaigns with conversion tracking configured

Access it asks for

• OAuth 2.0 access to read campaign performance data
• Developer token passed in the header to authenticate API requests
• Write access to add negative keywords to campaigns

What Nora reads

• Search terms reports for the past 7 days
• Campaign and ad group performance metrics

What Nora writes

• Negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level

When it goes wrong

• Google Ads API rate limit is exceeded Nora pauses the operation and waits for the standard access limit window to reset. It resumes the batch mutation request once capacity is available, completing the keyword sync.
• A campaign has no clicks for the week Nora skips the campaign entirely. It does not send an empty report or attempt to add negative keywords, simply waiting for the next scheduled run to check for new data.
• OAuth token expires or is revoked Nora stops the scheduled run and sends an alert to the primary chat channel. It provides a direct link to re-authenticate the Google Ads connection before attempting the sync again.
• A high-spend term contains your brand name Nora flags the term as a potential negative but does not apply it automatically. It sends the term in the weekly summary, asking the marketing manager to confirm if it should be blocked.

Who this is for

Worth it if

• Marketing managers running broad match campaigns with a monthly spend over $5,000
• Agencies managing multiple client accounts that need baseline search term hygiene
• Lead generation teams struggling with irrelevant B2B search traffic draining daily budgets

Not worth it if

• Accounts running strictly exact match keywords with highly constrained budgets
• Campaigns where conversion tracking is not set up, making it impossible to measure search term success

A worked example

A B2B software provider spends $15,000 a month on Google Ads. They ask Nora to block any search term that gets more than 30 clicks with zero conversions in a week.

Weekly Negative Keyword Sync Complete

Blocked 4 search terms across 2 campaigns. Estimated 7-day savings: $342.50.

Campaign: Enterprise CRM Search
- 'free crm for students' (42 clicks, $115.50 cost, 0 conv)
- 'crm definition wikipedia' (31 clicks, $85.25 cost, 0 conv)

Campaign: Sales Automation Competitor
- 'hubspot login page' (55 clicks, $98.00 cost, 0 conv)
- 'salesforce customer service number' (38 clicks, $43.75 cost, 0 conv)

These terms have been added as campaign-level negatives. Reply if you need any of these reversed.

Frequently asked questions

What if Nora blocks a keyword I actually want to keep?

You will see the blocked term in your weekly summary message. If you disagree with the decision, you reply in the chat and tell Nora to unblock it. Nora removes the negative keyword from Google Ads immediately and adds it to an internal allowlist so it never flags that specific search term again.

Can I change the click and cost thresholds?

Yes. You just tell Nora in your chat channel that you want to adjust the rules. For example, you can say 'change the threshold to 50 clicks and $100 in spend before blocking a term,' and Nora will use those new metrics for all future Monday syncs.

Does this work for ad group level negative keywords?

By default, Nora applies negative keywords at the campaign level to prevent the traffic from matching anywhere in that campaign. If your account structure requires tighter control, you can instruct Nora to apply the negatives at the ad group level instead. It will parse the search terms report by ad group to make the correct updates.

How does Nora handle terms with delayed conversions?

Google Ads attribution can take days to credit a conversion. If a term gets blocked on Monday but a conversion is later attributed to a click from Sunday, Nora sees this in the following week's performance summary. You can instruct Nora to cross-reference past blocked terms for late conversions and automatically unblock them.

Connects to

• Google Ads — all 8 Google Ads automations

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