Find Where Your Google Ads Budget Is Being Wasted
45% of Australian SMB accounts have zero negative keywords. Every one of those accounts is spending money on searches that will not convert — informational queries, competitor brand terms, irrelevant modifiers, and research-phase traffic that has no purchase intent.
The budget is not disappearing. It is going somewhere specific. viaCMO's search term intent classification shows you exactly where.
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Intent Buckets
The Four Intent Buckets — Why They Determine CPA
Transactional
User intends to complete a purchase or enquiry. 'Emergency plumber Melbourne'. These convert.
Commercial
User is comparing options before purchasing. 'Best plumber Melbourne'. Converts at lower rate but commercially viable.
Informational
User is researching. 'How to fix a leaking tap'. Rarely converts directly.
Navigational
User is looking for a specific business. Competitor brand terms. Budget spent here subsidises competitors.
An account spending 30% of its budget on Informational and Navigational queries — which is common in accounts without negative keyword management — is paying an average CPA that is 3–5x higher than it needs to be on those queries.
Negative Keywords
Negative Keyword Finder — What viaCMO Identifies
Classifying every search term in the past 90 days by intent bucket.
Identifying terms in Informational and Navigational buckets that have accumulated spend with zero or below-threshold conversions.
Cross-referencing against existing negative keyword lists to avoid duplicates.
Prioritising recommendations by spend volume — highest waste first.
Recommendations are specific terms, not categories. 'Add negative keyword: plumbing apprenticeship' — not 'consider reviewing your search terms.' Negative keyword additions are one of the five change types VIA can execute directly with your approval, alongside the rest of the platform's full independent Google Ads audit.
Landing Pages
The Landing Page Problem — Where Traffic Goes After the Click
Accounts where the primary landing page is the homepage — rather than a page that matches the search intent — convert at approximately half the rate of intent-matched pages. A user searching 'emergency plumber Melbourne' who lands on a general homepage has to find the relevant service. A user who lands on a page about emergency plumbing does not.
viaCMO identifies landing page mismatches as part of the keyword and ad setup assessment. Where a more relevant page exists on the site, the audit identifies it and includes it in the recommendation.
Find Out How Much of Your Budget Is Going to the Wrong Searches
The free health check includes the search term assessment. Connect your account in 60 seconds and see the intent classification breakdown — including the estimated wasted spend figure. Negative keyword recommendations can be executed by VIA with your approval. The impact is measurable within 7 days.
Find Wasted SpendFree health check · Read-only · Nothing changes without approval