No matter how long your Adwords account has been running and the efforts that you have already made to remove all irrelevant and useless clicks from your adverts, screening out negatives is never finished.
Making sure that the obvious negatives are removed right from the start of your active advertising is always best. Brainstorm the possible contextual uses of your broad match keywords. Remember that broad match “hat” may result in your adverts showing up for searches for with “helmet”, “cap”, “boater” etc.
Not much use to you if you don’t sell these products.
Even if with the obvious negatives removed, running Search Query reports is a good thing to do, a minimum of twice a month is recommended. As well as providing an insight into “long tail” keywords which may be of use to you, these reports will show you the myriad of user searches containing odd, tangental or even downright bizarre keywords that have been used to trigger your adverts.
Make sure that any of these useless terms are then properly applied to your negative list. That also is a bit more complex than it first seems.
Give us a call if you need help with the right approach. We’d be glad to offer assistance.