Clicks and Clarity with Claire
If you’re spending real money on Google Ads and still asking, “Why isn’t this working?”—this podcast is for you.
I’m Claire Jarrett, Google Ads strategist and founder of Jarrett Digital. Each week, I break down what’s actually going on behind the numbers—so you can stop wasting ad spend, start attracting qualified leads, and scale with confidence.
No fluff. No jargon. Just clear advice, real audits, and proven strategies from accounts managing four to six figures in monthly ad spend.
Whether you're DIY-ing your ads or working with an agency, this is the clarity you've been missing.
Clicks and Clarity with Claire
209 Negative Keywords and the Account Was Still Bleeding
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209 negative keywords added by the business owner and the search terms were still full of rubbish.
Claire audits a compensation law firm where the display network was on, the target CPA was set to $2, and every auto-optimisation was pulling in the same direction — get the cheapest possible conversions regardless of quality.
She explains why negative keywords cannot fix a structural problem, and what actually needs to change when Google is going sideways around your negatives through display and auto-applied changes.
Welcome to Clicks and Clarity with Claire.
I want to tell you about a compensation lawyer who did everything right with negative keywords. And it still did not work.
He had added 209 negative keywords to his campaigns. Competitors. Irrelevant injury types. Legal terms that had nothing to do with his practice area. He had gone through the search terms report and methodically excluded everything that should not have been there.
209 negatives is diligent work. Most business owners never look at their search terms report at all.
But when I opened the account, the search terms were still full of rubbish. Personal injury lawyer. Workplace accident compensation. Random legal queries that had nothing to do with what this firm actually does.
How is that possible when the owner had already added over 200 negatives?
Because the campaign structure defeated him.
The display network was on. Which means the ads were showing on websites, in apps, across Google's entire display inventory. You cannot fix a display network problem with negative keywords. Negative keywords only work on search. If the display network is on, Google will find entirely different ways to spend your money that have nothing to do with the keywords you are targeting or the negatives you have added.
The target CPA was set to $2.
$2 per lead for a legal firm.
Now, I understand wanting cheap leads. But if you tell Google you want leads at $2 each in the legal market, Google will find you $2 leads. They will be garbage. They will be form fills from bots, accidental clicks, people who have no idea they submitted anything. But Google will hit that $2 target because you told it to.
Every auto-optimisation was turned on. Google was editing the ad text. Google was suggesting which pages to send people to. Google was changing the targeting.
And all the auto-optimisation features were pulling in the same direction. Get the cheapest possible conversions regardless of quality.
So here is what was happening.
The business owner was adding negative keywords. Google was going sideways around them through the display network and the auto-applied changes. The owner would add more negatives. Google would find new ways to spend the money on irrelevant traffic. It was a game the owner could not win because the fundamental structure was working against him.
This to me says the negatives were not the problem. The negatives were fine. The problem was everything around them.
The fix was structural.
Turn off the display network. Turn off the search partners. Turn off every auto-optimisation. Set a realistic target CPA for the legal market, which is not $2. Separate the keywords into proper ad groups by claim type. Each type of claim the firm handles gets its own ad group. Toxic exposure in one group. Environmental injury in another. Government compensation in another. Each with matching ads and matching landing pages.
And then take those 209 negative keywords the owner had diligently built and put them into a shared negative keyword list that applies across all future campaigns. Because that work should not go to waste.
The owner had the right instinct. He was doing the work. He was going through search terms and adding negatives regularly. But the account was set up in a way that made his effort pointless.
If you are adding negative keywords and your search terms are still full of irrelevant queries, the problem might not be your negatives. Check whether the display network is on. Check what auto-apply recommendations are active. Check what your target CPA is actually telling Google to do.
Sometimes the campaign is working against you faster than you can fix it.
That is it for today.
If you want me to check whether your account structure is undermining your negative keywords, book a free audit at clairejarrett.com.
So many thanks for listening.
Bye for now.