Roll-up of spend on zero-conversion search terms, the cleanest recoverable line in the account.
At a glance
Spend on search terms and keywords that produced zero conversions over the window. The cleanest recoverable line item in any Google Ads account, every pound here is, by definition, recoverable on the next negative-keyword sweep or campaign pause.
| The formula | SUM(metrics.cost_micros) ÷ 1,000,000 filtered to rows where metrics.conversions = 0. Aggregates across keyword_view and search_term_view (and per-campaign roll-up where conversions are zero account-wide on a campaign). |
| GAQL resource + metric | Primarily FROM keyword_view and FROM search_term_view joined on cost > 0 AND conversions = 0. Some implementations also walk FROM campaign for campaigns with zero conversions in window. |
| Account currency (single by design) | Account currency from customer.currency_code. Multi-currency advertisers run separate accounts; this card is single-currency per account. |
| Conversion attribution model (configurable) | Whatever you have set in Google Ads. DDA is default for new accounts, Last click for older. Switching the model can move keywords in or out of “zero conversions” if the new model fails to credit them within window. |
| View-through inclusion (excluded by default) | Uses primary conversions only. A search term with view-through-only conversions appears as wasted spend here, but Google’s All-conversions view would credit it. This is intentional, view-through on Search is not a real signal. |
| Bot / IVT filter | Google’s Invalid Click Filter strips most bots before this card sees the data, so wasted spend here is real human clicks that did not convert. The 2-5% residual IVT bias makes wasted spend look slightly worse than reality. |
| Micros conversion | cost_micros divided by 1,000,000 to get account-currency units. Conversions are decimal counts, no division. |
| Real-time vs ingestion lag | 1-4 hour lag. A keyword that converted 30 minutes ago may still show in this card until ingestion catches up. Re-check the next morning before pausing anything. |
| MCC aggregation | Per child account only, the engine does not sum wasted spend across MCC children. |
| Time window | 30D. The 30-day window matters: shorter windows over-flag low-volume keywords that simply did not get a conversion-cycle worth of traffic. |
| Alert trigger | > $100 recoverable. Drives sentiment_key: zero_conversion_spend. Currency-aware threshold means £100 / €100 / $100 in the account’s own currency. |
| Roles | owner, marketing, finance |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Google Ads data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK fashion brand with £27,400 of total Google Ads spend over the 30-day window covering 14 Mar 26 to 12 Apr 26. The wasted-spend roll-up flags £1,840 (6.7% of total spend) as zero-conversion.| Source | Spend | Conversions | Why it is wasted |
|---|---|---|---|
| Search term: “free dress” | £620 | 0 | Intent mismatch, traffic looking for free product, never going to convert. Add free as a negative. |
| Search term: “size 22 plus size dress” | £310 | 0 | Brand stocks UK 6-18 only. Out-of-range query. Add size 22 / 24 / 26 as negatives. |
| Search term: “[competitor brand] dress” | £290 | 0 | Competitor-name query, click-through but no purchase. Either add competitor name as negative (cheap fix) or accept it as competitive defence (it is reasonable to budget some of this). |
| Display Remarketing campaign (account-wide) | £420 | 0 | One small remarketing campaign converted nothing in 30 days. Pause candidate. |
| Keyword: “vintage 90s dress” | £200 | 0 | Inventory mismatch. Brand sells contemporary, not vintage. Pause keyword. |
| Total wasted spend | £1,840 | 0 |
- The £1,840 is fully recoverable. Adding three negative keywords (
free,size 22+, competitor name) recovers ~£1,220 immediately, without touching campaigns. This is the highest-leverage 15 minutes of the week. - 6.7% wasted is healthy. Industry typical sits at 8-15% of spend on zero-conversion search terms. Below 5% suggests over-aggressive negative-keyword pruning (you may be blocking legitimate long-tail traffic). Above 15% means the account needs a sweep.
- Display Remarketing zero-conversion is not always wasted. If the audience is small and the spend is small (< £500/mo), it can be the cost of staying visible to people who would not convert via paid anyway. Use ROAS by Campaign to confirm whether the campaign has any periodic conversion at all.
- A search term with 1 click and 0 conversions is NOT the signal. The 30-day window matters precisely because some keywords need 30-50 clicks before a conversion is statistically expected. Acting on a 1-click zero-conversion line is noise. Filter to spend > £50 before pausing.
- Wasted spend will rise during promo cycles. A 25%-off campaign attracts price-sensitive bargain hunters who click everywhere and convert nowhere; expect this card to inflate by 30-50% during sales weeks. Don’t over-react.
- Wasted spend > 15% of total: account needs a negative-keyword sweep. See Search Terms.
- A single search term > £200 wasted: highest-priority single fix.
- Wasted spend rising while account ROAS holds: traffic mix is shifting; review match types (broad match leakage is the usual cause).
- Wasted spend zero or near-zero: probably over-pruned; check whether you have killed long-tail growth.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Wasted Spend |
|---|---|
| Google Ads Search Terms | The negative-keyword workbench. Wasted Spend tells you the £ value; Search Terms tells you which queries to negate. |
| Google Ads Zero Conversion Spend | The campaign-level analogue of this card (this one rolls up across keywords/search terms; that one shows whole campaigns at zero). |
| Google Ads ROAS by Campaign | Once you have removed the wasted line, where to redeploy the recovered budget (toward the higher-ROAS rows). |
| Google Ads Top Keywords by Spend | Spotting expensive keywords that are still profitable enough to keep. |
| Google Ads Conversion Drop | If wasted spend rose sharply WITH a conversion drop, the cause may be tag failure not query mix. Check this card first. |
| Google Ads Quality Score | Low-quality-score keywords waste spend by paying CPC premiums on irrelevant traffic. Quality Score is the leading indicator. |
| GA4 Revenue by Channel | Independent attribution check. If GA4 credits revenue from search terms Google Ads marks as zero, your pixel may be misfiring on those landing pages. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in Google Ads UI: Google Ads > Insights and reports > Search terms. Sort by Cost descending and filter Conversions = 0. The total at the foot of that view should match this card to within 1-2%. Google Ads > Keywords > Search keywords with Conversions = 0 filter is the keyword-level equivalent. Other Google Ads views that look like the same number but aren’t:- All conv. = 0: includes view-through. This card uses primary conversions only, so the All-conversions filter will mark fewer terms as wasted.
- Search Terms with 1+ conversions: not in this card. Some shops mark a £5,000-spend / 1-conversion term as wasted (CPA too high), but that is a separate concept (see CPA Trend).
- Display placements report: Google Ads has a separate placements view for Display campaigns; this card aggregates Display campaigns at the campaign level, not at the placement level.
- Negative keyword conflicts: if you have negatives blocking high-intent queries, those don’t appear here (Google didn’t bid on them). They are missed opportunity, not wasted spend.
| Reason | Direction of divergence |
|---|---|
| Real-time event-ingestion lag (1-4 hour). A conversion attributed in the last hour may still be missing here. | This card may show ~5-10% more wasted spend than the live Google Ads view; corrects within 4 hours. |
| Attribution-model change mid-window. Switching DDA <-> Last click rewrites which terms got credit. | Wasted-spend roll-up changes; the Google Ads UI re-renders identically, no drift. |
| Currency. Both use account currency. | None. |
| Refresh lag. Vortex IQ refreshes typically every 4 hours. | Google Ads UI may be ~4 hours fresher. |
conversions_value is the truth. In practice, a search term marked here as zero-conversion may have:
- Driven a conversion that the pixel missed. Tag-fire failures on specific landing pages (mobile-only checkout glitches, JS errors) cause pixel under-reporting. Cross-check against Clicks vs Conversions and the commerce platform’s UTM-tagged orders.
- Driven an offline conversion (phone call, in-store) that the merchant doesn’t import into Google Ads. Common for services, less common for ecom.
- Driven a multi-touch path where Google Ads was the first click and got no last-click credit. The session value is captured by the closing channel, not Google Ads. Cross-check with GA4 Path Analysis before pausing.
- Driven a conversion that closed outside the attribution window. Default 7-day click window; a high-consideration product (jewellery, furniture) may convert at day 14 and never appear here as the cause.
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
google_analytics.ga_revenue_by_channel (Paid Search) | If GA4 credits revenue from queries this card marks zero-conversion, the pixel is under-reporting. | Pixel misfire, longer attribution windows in GA4. |
shopify.total_revenue (UTM-filtered to Google CPC) | Sum of Shopify revenue tagged with these specific search terms, if any, should be near zero. | UTM tag may hold the keyword string in utm_term, allowing direct check. |
bigcommerce.total_revenue | Same logic as Shopify. | Same as Shopify. |