Is your agency burning your Google Ads budget with broad match? Here's how to check yourself

You see your Google Ads bill climbing, but the number of enquiries lags behind. You suspect your budget is leaking to searches that have nothing to do with your offer. And the big question keeps nagging: why isn’t my agency adding negative keywords?

Good news: you don’t need a Google Ads expert to check this. In this article you run the Google Ads search terms report self-audit yourself in five minutes, you learn to spot whether broad match is burning your budget, and you see what you can expect from now on from an honest marketing partner.

Why broad match can quietly eat your budget

Broad match is the widest match type in Google Ads. You provide a keyword, and Google may show your ad on anything the algorithm considers loosely related. That sounds convenient, but in practice it means that without tight management you pay for clicks that never become customers.

A few typical examples of waste in B2B:

• Someone searches for a free or do-it-yourself solution while you sell a paid service.
• A job seeker clicks your ad because your brand name or an industry term shows up in a recruitment context.
• A consumer searches for something that superficially resembles your B2B offer, but will never buy.
• Loose, overly broad terms that pull in volume but carry no buying intent.

Broad match isn’t inherently bad. In the hands of an actively managed account, fed the right signals and backed by a maintained negative keyword list, it can discover valuable traffic. The problem arises when nobody checks in every week. The match type then keeps attracting ever broader traffic on its own, and your ad budget leaks away to irrelevant clicks.

How do I check whether my Google Ads budget is wasted on broad match?

Here’s the self-audit. You only need access to your Google Ads account and about five minutes.

Step 1: open your search terms report

Log in to Google Ads. Go to Campaigns, click through to Insights and reports and choose Search terms. You now see the literal words people typed before clicking your ad. This is different from your keywords: this is reality, not intent.

Set the period to the last 30 days.

Step 2: sort by cost

Click the top of the Cost column so the most expensive search terms sit on top. That instantly shows you where the money really goes. Calmly work through the top twenty to thirty terms.

Step 3: flag what doesn’t fit

Read each term and ask yourself one simple question: could someone who types this become a customer of mine? Put an imaginary cross next to every term that:

• clearly is about something else,
• points to free, training, jobs or second-hand,
• is far too generic for your specific service.

Step 4: count the damage

Roughly add up how much of your top spend went to those irrelevant terms. Does the bulk of your budget flow to relevant, purchase-oriented search terms? Then you’re in good shape. Does a substantial part go to noise? Then broad match is burning your budget and your negative keywords lack maintenance.

A healthy account has the lion’s share of spend on recognisable, relevant searches. Lots of loose, odd terms at the top of your cost list is a red flag.

My budget goes to irrelevant keywords: why isn’t my agency adding negative keywords?

Before you write off your marketing partner: this is rarely bad faith. Usually it’s a matter of a missing routine or the wrong steering. The most common causes:

• No weekly maintenance. Reviewing the search terms report and adding new negative keywords is recurring work. In busy or cheap packages that task fades away.
• Steering on the wrong KPI. An agency measured on clicks or impressions has less reason to filter out traffic. An agency that steers on cost per lead does.
• Default settings never adjusted. Broad match plus automated bidding without a solid negative keyword list is a combination that demands follow-up.
• Too little reporting. If you never see a clear report, the waste stays invisible, to you and sometimes to the agency itself.

The solution isn’t a fight, but a clear conversation. Ask concretely: what share of our budget went to relevant search terms last month, and when was the negative keyword list last updated? The answer instantly tells you how much of a grip your partner really has. If you want to dig deeper, you can consider an independent Google Ads account audit.

My advertising agency is burning my ad budget: what can I do?

Suppose the self-audit confirms what you feared. The traffic is largely noise and your agency responds slowly or stalls. Then you have a few level-headed options, in increasing order.

1. Request the search terms report and the negative keyword list. A transparent partner shares them without hesitation. If you get excuses, you know enough.
2. Agree on a fixed rhythm. Lock in that the search terms report is reviewed weekly or fortnightly and that negative keywords are added.
3. Steer toward the right KPI. Shift the conversation from clicks to cost per qualified enquiry. Also read what you can realistically expect from a Google Ads agency.
4. Have a second opinion carried out. An outside view exposes blind spots. You can easily request an audit.
5. Consider switching. If nothing changes, switching to another agency is justified. But first watch out for one thing.

First this: who owns your account?

Before you take any action, check who owns your Google Ads account. If the agency set up the account in its own name, you risk losing your history when you switch. So read up on account ownership at your agency and why you can lose data when you make the switch. That history is valuable, because the algorithm learns from it.

What you can rightly expect from a good partner

Being honest about the other side: no agency can prevent broad match from occasionally bringing in a strange search term. That comes with the match type. What you can expect:

• Proactive transparency. You get to see the search terms report without having to ask.
• A living negative keyword list. It grows every week, not once a year.
• Steering on return. The conversation is about cost per lead and quality, not bare click counts.
• Explanations in plain language. You understand where your money goes, even without having to know a bidding strategy yourself.

More and more B2B buyers expect this openness, and rightly so. A growing share of the companies that come to us arrived with exactly this feeling: the budget was leaking and nobody could explain where. In almost every one of those cases, a maintained negative keyword list turned out to be the fastest, cheapest win.

Frequently asked questions

My Google Ads budget goes to irrelevant keywords, why isn’t my agency adding negative keywords?

Usually because weekly maintenance is missing or because they steer on clicks instead of leads. Ask when the negative keyword list was last updated and what share of your budget went to relevant search terms. A good partner answers this effortlessly.

How do I check whether my Google Ads budget is wasted on broad match?

Open your search terms report, sort by cost and read the most expensive terms of the last 30 days. For each term, ask whether that person can become a customer. If a large part of your spend goes to terms that don’t fit, then broad match is burning your budget.

My advertising agency is burning my ad budget, what can I do?

First request the search terms report and the negative keyword list and agree on a fixed review rhythm. If nothing changes, have an independent audit done. Before any switch, always check whether you own your account yourself.

Is broad match always bad for my budget?

No. In an actively managed account with a solid negative keyword list, broad match can discover new, valuable traffic. It only becomes a problem when nobody checks in and the negative keywords aren’t maintained.

How often should an agency review the search terms report?

For most B2B accounts, weekly to fortnightly is a healthy rhythm. The broader your match types and the bigger your budget, the more often it needs to happen.

Ready to see where your budget really goes?

Feel free to do the self-audit above first. Want an independent look at your account? We’re happy to take a look and show you in black and white what share of your Google Ads budget goes to real leads and what share evaporates into noise.

We’re a small team, so we move fast and often do more than you expect. Book your free intake and we’ll go through your search terms report together.