Surfaces Performance Max search categories that rack up clicks without converting — the wasted-spend hiding in the PMax black box — with Google Sheet logging and email alerts.
by Nils Rooijmans·nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-pmax-non-converting-search-term-alerts
Uses Claude AI to analyze your search terms and recommend negative keywords with clear reasoning. Each term is evaluated for business relevance, intent, and conversion potential — then exported to a Google Sheet with actionable suggestions.
Finds brand search terms leaking into non-brand campaigns (inflating their stats and misleading Smart Bidding) and generic traffic riding in brand campaigns — with the misrouted spend quantified.
Measures how much of your exact-match spend actually flows through close variants and lists the zero-conversion variants — the most surgical negative keyword candidates in the account.
Reads negative keywords and placement exclusions from a Google Sheet and syncs them to multiple campaigns via shared negative keyword and placement lists. Optionally filters to campaigns with a specific label.
Quantifies spend on search queries containing competitor names, with conversion performance and a period-over-period trend — whether competitor bidding is your strategy or your broad-match accident.
Shows what your Dynamic Search Ads decided on their own: waste queries to negate, the landing pages absorbing DSA spend, and converting queries to promote into real keywords.
You can't add negatives from a report you never see. This script mines PMax campaign search term insights for terms that exceeded your click threshold during the lookback window yet stayed under your conversion threshold, logs them to a Google Sheet, and emails you the list — ammunition for negative keyword requests, campaign-level exclusions, or asset group restructuring.
| Variable | Default |
|---|---|
SPREADSHEET_URL | (required) |
EMAIL_ADDRESSES | (required) |
LOOKBACK_WINDOW | 90 |
MIN_CLICKS | 100 |
CONVERSION_THRESHOLD | 0.5 |
Sheet rows per offending term: search term/category, campaign, clicks and conversions in the lookback window — plus an email '[PMax Alert] You've got N Non-Converting Search Terms'.
PMax negatives can't be added via scripts — use the alert list with Google's campaign-level negative keyword form or your Google rep. The author offers a paid version with (semi)automatic negative management.