Negative keywords keep your Google Ads budget off searches that were never going to buy. By excluding irrelevant search terms they help you reach the right audience and improve your return on investment (ROI).
So, what exactly are negative keywords?
They are terms or phrases that you specify to prevent your ads from appearing for certain searches. For instance, if you sell luxury watches and add “cheap” as a negative keyword, your ads won’t show up for searches like “cheap luxury watches.”
This filtering process helps your ads reach users who are more likely to convert, which can mean a higher click-through rate (CTR) and a lower cost per acquisition.
Why Negative Keywords Matter in Google Ads
Negative keywords do four things for a Google Ads campaign.
- Improved Ad Relevance: By excluding irrelevant searches, negative keywords help ensure your ads are shown to users who are more likely to be interested in your products or services, improving ad relevance and click-through rates.
- Cost Savings: Negative keywords help you avoid wasting your advertising budget on clicks from users who are unlikely to convert, ultimately reducing your cost per acquisition.
- Better Quality Scores: Higher ad relevance can help the factors behind your Quality Score, which can mean lower costs per click and better ad positions.
- Focused Targeting: Negative keywords allow you to fine-tune your targeting and ensure your ads are only shown to your desired audience, maximising the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Types of Negative Keywords
Google Ads offers three types of negative keywords, each with its own level of specificity:
- Broad Match Negative Keywords: These prevent your ads from showing if the search query contains all of your negative keyword terms, in any order, with other words allowed.
- Phrase Match Negative Keywords: These prevent your ads from showing if the search query contains the exact phrase of your negative keywords, in the same order, even if there are additional words before or after the phrase.
- Exact Match Negative Keywords: These prevent your ads from showing if the search query matches your negative keywords exactly, without any additional words.
Pick the match type that gives you the level of exclusion you actually want.
How to Identify Negative Keywords
Finding negative keywords is ongoing work, and it starts with what you already know about your customers and your market. Five places to look.
- Search Terms Report: Regularly review your search terms report in Google Ads to identify irrelevant search queries that triggered your ads. These terms can be added as negative keywords to prevent similar occurrences in the future.
- Customer Feedback: Listen to your customers and analyse the language they use when describing their needs or concerns. The words they use are the words you should be excluding.
- Competitor Analysis: Examine the negative keywords used by your competitors to gain inspiration and identify potential gaps in your own negative keyword strategy.
- Industry Knowledge: Use what you already know about your industry to anticipate irrelevant searches and add them before they cost you money.
- Customer Support Logs: Review customer support inquiries and complaints to identify common misunderstandings or irrelevant searches that may require the addition of negative keywords.
Researching Negative Keywords
Your own account data will not show you everything, so go looking for the terms you have not been shown yet.
- Keyword Research Tools: Use keyword research tools like Google’s Keyword Planner, SEMrush, Ahrefs, or Ubersuggest to explore related terms and phrases that could be added as negative keywords.
- Online Forums and Communities: Watch online forums, social media groups and industry communities for the language your target audience actually uses. It throws up negative keywords you would never have guessed.
- Brainstorming Sessions: Collaborate with your team or conduct internal brainstorming sessions to generate ideas for negative keywords based on your collective knowledge and expertise.
Tools for Finding Negative Keywords
- Google Ads Search Terms Report: This built-in report within the Google Ads interface provides a comprehensive list of the actual search queries that triggered your ads, allowing you to quickly identify and add irrelevant terms as negative keywords.
- Google Ads Keyword Planner: Built for keyword research, it shows related terms and phrases that you can then judge for your own campaigns.
- SEMrush: This popular SEO and digital marketing toolkit offers a comprehensive Keyword Magic Tool for finding related terms, some of which you may want to exclude.
- Ubersuggest: Neil Patel’s free keyword research tool, Ubersuggest, allows you to explore related keywords and phrases, many of which could be potential negative keywords for your campaigns.
- Third-Party Negative Keyword Lists: Several companies and agencies offer pre-built negative keyword lists tailored to specific industries or niches, which can serve as a starting point for your negative keyword strategy.
Implementing Negative Keywords in Google Ads
Once you have your list, here is how to add it in Google Ads.
- Sign in to your Google Ads account and navigate to the “Keywords” section.
- Click on the “Negative Keywords” tab.
- From here, you can add negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level, depending on your desired level of granularity.
- Click on the “+” button and enter your negative keywords, separating them with commas or line breaks.
- Select the appropriate match type (broad, phrase, or exact) for each negative keyword.
- Review your negative keywords for any potential conflicts or overlaps with your existing keyword lists.
- Save your changes.
Negative keywords ignore capitals and catch misspellings, but they don’t cover close variants, so add the singular and the plural separately (Google’s rule: excluding ‘flowers’ still lets your ad show for ‘red flower’).
Negative Keyword Strategies
A negative keyword strategy takes more work than dropping a few irrelevant terms into a campaign. It has to fit your business objectives, your audience and the way your campaigns are built.
- Start Broad, Then Refine: Begin with general negative keywords that exclude whole irrelevant topics. As the data builds up, refine the lists with more specific terms.
- Group by Themes: Organise your negative keywords into thematic groups related to your products, services, or industry. This approach makes it easier to manage and update your negative keyword lists.
- Continuous Monitoring and Adjustment: Regularly review your search terms reports and campaign performance data to identify new negative keywords and adjust existing ones as needed.
- Prioritise High-Impact Negative Keywords: Focus your efforts on identifying and implementing negative keywords that are likely to have the most significant impact on your campaign performance and cost savings.
- Use Shared Lists: Create shared negative keyword lists you can apply across several campaigns or ad groups, which keeps them consistent and saves you repeating yourself.
Broad Match Negative Keywords
Broad match is the widest of the three negative keyword match types. It prevents your ads from showing if the search query contains all of your negative keyword terms, in any order, with other words allowed.
For example, if you add “cheap” as a broad match negative keyword, your ads won’t show up for searches like “cheap luxury watches,” “watches cheap online,” or any other query that includes the term “cheap” in any order or combination.
Broad match negative keywords are useful for excluding irrelevant topics or themes from your campaigns. They provide a wide exclusion net, helping you quickly filter out a large volume of irrelevant traffic.
Use broad match carefully, because it will exclude relevant searches as well. Start broad, then refine the list with phrase or exact match negatives.
Phrase Match Negative Keywords
Phrase match negative keywords offer a more targeted approach to excluding irrelevant traffic from your campaigns. These negative keywords prevent your ads from showing if the search query contains the exact phrase of your negative keywords, in the same order, even if there are additional words before or after the phrase.
For instance, if you add “cheap watches” as a phrase match negative keyword, your ads won’t show up for searches like “cheap luxury watches for men” or “buy cheap watches online,” but they may still appear for searches like “affordable luxury watches” or “watches cheap price.”
Phrase match negative keywords are particularly useful for filtering out specific, non-converting search terms that you’ve identified from your search terms reports or customer feedback. They provide a balance between broad exclusion and precise targeting, allowing you to exclude irrelevant phrases while still capturing relevant searches that may contain variations or additional words.
Exact Match Negative Keywords
Exact match is the most precise way to exclude irrelevant traffic. It prevents your ads from showing if the search query matches your negative keyword exactly, with no extra words or variations.
For example, if you add “cheap luxury watches” as an exact match negative keyword, your ads won’t show up for the exact search query “cheap luxury watches,” but they may still appear for variations like “cheap luxury watch online” or “affordable luxury watches.”
Exact match negative keywords are for the specific phrases you already know are wrong for you, and nothing beyond them.
Use exact match alongside broad and phrase match rather than on its own.
Common Mistakes with Negative Keywords
Four mistakes come up again and again with negative keywords.
- Overuse of Negative Keywords: One of the most common mistakes is the overuse of negative keywords. While it’s important to exclude irrelevant traffic, adding too many negative keywords can inadvertently restrict your ad’s reach, causing you to miss out on potential conversions. You have to balance filtering out unwanted traffic against keeping enough reach to catch the relevant searches.
- Neglecting to Update Negative Keyword Lists: Markets, trends, and consumer behaviour are constantly evolving, which means your negative keyword lists should be regularly updated to reflect these changes. Failing to review and update your negative keywords can lead to missed opportunities or wasted ad spend on irrelevant traffic.
- Improper Use of Match Types: The wrong match type is either too restrictive or too broad, so you either block searches you wanted or keep paying for ones you did not. Learn what each match type does and pick the one that fits the campaign.
- Lack of Negative Keyword Research: Relying solely on intuition or a limited set of data to identify negative keywords can lead to missed opportunities or ineffective exclusions. Competitor analysis, customer feedback and search query mining are what build a list that works.
Avoiding Overuse of Negative Keywords
To avoid the pitfall of overusing negative keywords, it’s important to regularly review your negative keyword lists and assess their impact on your campaign performance. Start by excluding only the obvious irrelevant terms, then refine the lists as the data builds up.
Periodic audits of your search terms reports can help identify any potentially relevant searches that may have been inadvertently excluded due to overly broad negative keywords. Your impression share and search query data will also tell you whether the negatives are too restrictive and costing you conversions.
Negative Keywords and Account Structure
Where you put your negative keywords in the account matters as much as which ones you pick.
- Campaign-Level Negative Keywords: Apply broad, overarching negative keywords at the campaign level to exclude irrelevant traffic across all ad groups within the campaign. This approach ensures consistency and efficiency in managing your negative keyword lists.
- Ad Group-Level Negative Keywords: Use ad group-level negative keywords to tailor exclusions more precisely based on the specific products, services, or themes targeted by each ad group. This granular approach allows you to fine-tune your targeting and avoid broad-brush restrictions.
- Shared Negative Keyword Lists: Create shared negative keyword lists that can be easily applied across multiple campaigns or ad groups. Keeping them in one place is quicker to manage and keeps every campaign consistent.
- Negative Keyword Inheritance: Campaign-level negative keywords apply to every ad group in the campaign.
Using Negative Keywords in Display Campaigns
Negative keywords work in display campaigns too. They stop your ads appearing on irrelevant sites and in irrelevant contexts, which lifts ad relevance and click-through rate.
- Exclude Irrelevant Topics or Content: Use topic exclusions to stop your ads appearing on websites or content that cover irrelevant topics or themes. For example, if you sell eco-friendly products, you may want to exclude the topic “climate change denial” to avoid appearing on websites that promote misinformation on climate change.
- Use Placement Exclusions: As well as negative keywords, placement exclusions stop your ads appearing on specific websites or domains that are irrelevant or unsuitable for your brand.
- Monitor and Analyse Placement Reports: Regularly review your placement reports to identify websites or contexts where your ads are appearing but not performing well. These placements can be added as negative keywords or placement exclusions to improve the overall performance of your display campaigns.
- Collaborate with Brand Safety Teams: If your organisation has a dedicated brand safety team, collaborate with them to identify potentially risky or inappropriate contexts that should be excluded from your display campaigns using negative keywords or placement exclusions.
- Use Contextual Targeting Exclusions: Google Ads offers contextual targeting options, which allow you to target or exclude specific topics, interests, or content categories. Use these contextual targeting exclusions in conjunction with negative keywords to refine your ad placements and improve relevance.
Impact of Negative Keywords on Quality Score
Quality Score is Google’s estimate of how relevant your keywords, ads and landing page are to a search. It is built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. It is a diagnostic figure rather than a number the auction uses directly, but the factors behind it move your costs. Negative keywords can help those factors.
- Improved Ad Relevance: By excluding irrelevant searches and traffic, negative keywords help ensure that your ads are shown to users who are more likely to be interested in your products or services. This increased relevance between your ads and the user’s search intent can positively impact your Quality Score.
- Higher Click-Through Rates (CTRs): Negative keywords help filter out irrelevant traffic, ensuring that your ads are shown to users who are more likely to find them relevant and useful. This increased relevance can lead to higher click-through rates, which are a key factor in determining Quality Score.
- Better Keyword Relevance: By effectively using negative keywords, you can ensure that your ads are triggered by the most relevant search queries, improving the relevance between your keywords and the user’s search intent. Keyword relevance is one of the things Quality Score is built from.
- Improved Landing Page Experience: When your ads are shown to more relevant users, they are more likely to have a positive experience on your landing pages, as the content and offerings better align with their interests and needs. A better landing page experience can contribute to a higher Quality Score.
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