How Eli Health uses Agent to filter thousands of search terms and find real customers

A search term can look relevant, yet still be the wrong customer. Eli Health is the company behind the world's first instant cortisol test available in the United States and Canada. They see it every day: people searching for supplements, lab tests, a diagnosis or a competitor's kit. Ricardo Flores, who oversees growth creative, uses Opteo to keep their budget focused on the people who actually want what Eli sells.

The problem

Searches that look right, from the wrong people

Eli sells a modern wellness product. It isn't a supplement, a lab service or a medical diagnosis, yet all three show up in their search terms. In a single month, Agent found Eli's ads appearing for unassociated testing labs, at-home testing kits, supplements, treatments, medical checks, and diagnosis queries. Each click is small, but together they add up. Most of the irrelevant clicks that Agent found in Eli's search term report came through Google's Performance Max campaign, where wasted spend is most difficult to spot and typically the most challenging to control.

Thousands of terms, too many to judge manually

Previously, Eli's account produced at least 24,000 search terms a month that didn't convert. Without a dedicated person to review that volume by hand, the right call can genuinely be difficult. A search for a competitor's product usually isn't the right intent, but now and then one converts. With Eli's range growing, searches that were once irrelevant can become relevant as the market shifts. A simple data-driven rule like "exclude anything with no conversions" risks blocking potential customers.

In health, search intent can be messy—it's so easy to pay for traffic that doesn't convert.

The solution

Judged on fit, not on cost

Ricardo runs an Agent-driven search term relevancy audit across all campaigns over the last 30 days. Agent maps out a profile of Eli's offering using preloaded account context and live data from their website in matter of seconds, then sets aside terms that are already excluded or have converted. Every remaining search terms is then assessed for its relevance to the business, rather than a purely statistical analysis that relys on cost or performance metrics, and only tells part of the story. A single audit reviewed 24,775 terms in seven minutes, flagging 3,319 and grouping them into themes like competing providers, diagnosis searches and unrelated health tests. As Eli's range expands with the sophistication of the platform, its profile will grow with it, protecting searches for new tests and product features.

Conversion data comes first, exclusions second

Before any list is applied, Agent checks whether the flagged terms have converted, including competitor searches, which sometimes do. Any that have converted stay off the list. It looks at every conversion type as well as the purchases, so a term that leads people further into the site isn't cut by mistake. Only then does Ricardo choose which themes to block, approving each batch before Agent adds it to the account.

Relevance is the right filter, not cost—a cheap term can still be the wrong customer.

The results

Fewer wasted clicks, without the manual review

The audit is now a regular part of how Eli runs search. It reviews a month of search terms in minutes, and a single session added 240 negatives to a shared list. Every batch approved and nothing that had converted caught in the net. Every audit picks up where the last one left off, with the latest flagging another 1,725 off-topic terms. Ricardo's time now focuses on the judgement calls, such as which competitor terms are worth keeping, instead of sorting through lists by hand.

We check every search term against our product line—that scale isn't possible by hand.

Takeaways

• Judge search terms on relevance, not just cost. A cheap, irrelevant click still pulls budget away from people who want what you sell.
• Check conversions before you block. Competitor and edge-case searches sometimes convert, so ask before adding them as negatives.
• Keep your business profile current. When your product range changes, the definition of an irrelevant search changes with it.