Stop paying for recruitment searches in a customer service campaign

Recognize the hiring-intent pattern

A repair company may buy clicks from people looking for work because its service name also describes an occupation. The diagnostic is the request behind the search, not the presence of a particular noun. A phrase about technician vacancies points toward hiring; a request for a technician to fix equipment points toward a customer. Google's search terms report supplies visible query evidence, while negative keywords exclude matching unwanted searches.

Source checks: About the search terms report · About negative keywords

Collect evidence without making up hidden searches

Use one campaign, one date range, and the same conversion-action columns for the review. Export search term, matched keyword, cost, and recorded inquiries. Add a manual intent column: recruitment, customer service, uncertain, or unrelated. Link any genuine inquiry outcome when possible. Some searches are omitted for privacy, so visible recruitment cost is a known portion of spend, not an estimate of every undisclosed click. Keep the undisclosed remainder separate.

Build a narrow exclusion decision

Start with phrases that clearly request employment rather than a paid service. Decide whether the exclusion belongs in one ad group, a campaign, or an account list. A company that also advertises open positions should not place hiring exclusions across every campaign. Write the reason beside each proposed negative so another manager can distinguish an intentional restriction from a copied list.

• List the clearly unwanted hiring phrases found in the export.
• Choose a negative match type that excludes that intent without swallowing customer requests.
• Check a small set of legitimate commercial and residential searches before applying the list.
• Record the scope, date, and person responsible for the change.

Protect words with more than one meaning

Terms such as commercial, contract, job, and installation can describe valuable customer work. Excluding them broadly can remove the very service you want to sell. Check plurals and alternative wording as separate decisions rather than assuming every negative behaves like a positive keyword. A competitor's exclusion list is especially risky when its service range differs from yours. Keep ambiguous searches under review until the message, landing page, or inquiry supplies clearer evidence.

Review the next inquiries, not just the lower cost

After applying the exclusions, compare visible recruitment queries and qualified customer inquiries over a comparable period. Also check whether legitimate commercial requests disappeared. A smaller bill is not a win if profitable work vanished alongside recruitment traffic. Note other changes, such as a budget reduction or holiday closure, that could explain the difference. Review after enough new traffic arrives to evaluate the excluded intent, rather than declaring success after a quiet afternoon.

Keep recruitment advertising separate

If the business actually needs staff, give recruitment its own destination, budget, and success definition. A job application and a service quote should not share the same lead goal. For the service campaign, maintain a short review note explaining which hiring requests were excluded and why. That note is the useful handoff: the next manager can preserve the decision while checking fresh searches, rather than repeatedly adding broader negatives without understanding the tradeoff.

Worked example: illustrative figures

For example, a campaign spends $300 on visible searches. Clearly identified recruitment queries account for $60; customer-service queries account for $210; uncertain queries account for $30. The known recruitment share is $60 ÷ $300 = 20% of this visible sample. The owner adds narrow employment-intent negatives and leaves 'commercial repair job' unblocked because it can describe customer work. The next review checks recruitment requests and booked service jobs separately. These figures describe the classification exercise, not a forecast of savings or the undisclosed portion of traffic.

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