The GAQL query for search terms that spend without converting

The query

SELECT search_term_view.search_term, search_term_view.status,
  campaign.name, ad_group.name,
  metrics.impressions, metrics.clicks, metrics.cost_micros, metrics.conversions
FROM search_term_view
WHERE segments.date DURING LAST_30_DAYS AND metrics.cost_micros > 0
ORDER BY metrics.cost_micros DESC
LIMIT 200

GAQL (Google Ads Query Language) is the SQL-like language of the Google Ads API. You can run it in the API, in a Google Ads script with AdsApp.search, or from an AI assistant connected through an MCP server.

Reading the result

• metrics.cost_micros is cost in millionths of your account currency: 12,340,000 means 12.34.
• search_term_view.status tells you whether the term is already added as a keyword or excluded.
• To keep only the terms with no conversions, add AND metrics.conversions = 0 to the WHERE clause. We prefer to keep them all and read the zero rows from the top: the converting terms around them tell you what "normal" costs.

Date ranges that work

DURING accepts only fixed names such as LAST_7_DAYS, LAST_14_DAYS, LAST_30_DAYS. For any other window use segments.date BETWEEN '2026-09-01' AND '2026-09-27'. We learned this the hard way: a script with LAST_10_DAYS simply fails.

Where to go from here

The query finds candidates; deciding which ones are waste still needs the question "do we sell that?". The free daily script runs this kind of query every morning and emails the result.