Two of the most common “free money down the drain” searches for local service businesses are anyone searching for something with the word free in it, and anyone searching for a job at your company instead of your services. Neither type of searcher is going to become a customer today, but Google will happily show them your ad and charge you for the click.
Why these searches slip through
Google Ads matches broadly by default. If you’re bidding on “boiler installation”, Google may also show your ad for “free boiler grant” or “boiler installation jobs Manchester” unless you’ve told it not to. Neither searcher wants what you’re selling, but both cost you the same click price as someone genuinely ready to buy.
The wording matters more than people expect — blocking “jobs” doesn’t automatically catch “plumbing jobs manchester” if the exact phrase you blocked was “plumber jobs”. Google is literal about this.
How to block them properly
- Look at your actual search terms report (not your keyword list — the report of what people actually typed) for the last 30–90 days.
- Find any search containing “free”, “grant”, “jobs”, “salary”, “apprenticeship”, “course”, or similar words that don’t belong in your business.
- Add each one as a negative keyword — the exact wording that appears, not a guess at the wording.
- Check back in a month, because new variants appear over time.
Done properly, this is one of the fastest, safest wins in Google Ads — you’re not touching bids, budgets, or targeting, just stopping money going to searches that were never going to become customers.
How Ads Toolbox handles this
Ads Toolbox checks your search terms every day, finds the ones that clicked but never turned into an enquiry, and shows you exactly which ones to block and how much they’re costing — with one button to block them, and nothing changes until you say yes.
See it on a real account → — the demo account has four “free” and “jobs”-style searches already found and blocked, with the savings tracked over time.
