Negative Keywords: How to Find and Add Them

Without negative keywords, your ads can show for searches that are completely irrelevant to your business. A plumber bidding on "plumber" might show ads for "plumber salary," "how to become a plumber," or "plumber simulator game." These clicks waste money and lower your CTR, which damages Quality Score.

Effective negative keyword management is one of the highest-ROI optimisation activities in Google Ads. It is not uncommon for new accounts to waste 20-40% of budget on irrelevant clicks until negatives are properly configured.

### Before Launch

Brainstorm terms you do not want to trigger your ads. Common categories include job-related terms (jobs, careers, salary, hiring, internship, resume, interview), free and DIY terms (free, DIY, how to, tutorial, template, download — unless these are relevant to your business), educational terms (course, training, certification, degree — unless you sell education), competitor names (if you choose not to bid on them), irrelevant locations (cities, states, or countries you do not serve), and irrelevant products or services (related terms that are not what you sell).

After Launch — The Search Terms Report

The Search Terms Report is your primary tool for ongoing negative keyword discovery. Go to Keywords > Search terms to see the actual queries triggering your ads. Review this report daily in the first week, then weekly ongoing.

Look for queries that are clearly irrelevant to your business, queries with high impressions but zero conversions over time, queries with very low CTR (suggesting poor relevance), and queries where the intent does not match your offering.

Using Autocomplete and Related Searches

Type your keywords into Google and observe the autocomplete suggestions. Many suggestions will be relevant, but some will reveal irrelevant associations you should proactively block.

### Negative Broad Match (default)

If your negative keyword is "free plumber," your ad will NOT show for searches containing both "free" and "plumber" in any order. It WILL show for searches containing only one of the words.

Does not block: "plumber dubai" (missing "free"), "free electrician" (missing "plumber").
Blocks: "free plumber dubai," "plumber free estimate."

Negative Phrase Match

If your negative keyword is -"plumber salary," your ad will NOT show for searches containing "plumber salary" as a phrase. It WILL show for searches with those words in a different order or separated.

Blocks: "plumber salary dubai," "average plumber salary."
Does not block: "salary for a plumber" (different word order).

Negative Exact Match

If your negative keyword is -[plumber salary], your ad will NOT show for the exact search "plumber salary." It WILL show for any variation, including "plumber salaries" or "plumber salary dubai."

Use negative exact match when you want to block one very specific query without affecting related terms.

### Ad Group Level

Add negatives to a specific ad group when you want to prevent overlap between ad groups in the same campaign. For example, if you have an "Emergency Plumber" ad group and a "General Plumber" ad group, add "emergency" as a negative in the General ad group so emergency searches only trigger the Emergency ad group.

Campaign Level

Add negatives at the campaign level when the exclusion applies to the entire campaign. For example, add "jobs" and "salary" as campaign-level negatives since they are irrelevant to all ad groups.

Shared Negative Keyword Lists

Create shared lists in Tools > Shared library > Negative keyword lists. These apply across multiple campaigns automatically. Create a master list of universal negatives (jobs, free, DIY, etc.) and apply it to all Search campaigns. This saves time and ensures consistency.

A healthy account typically has 50-200+ negative keywords across campaigns and shared lists. There is no set number — it depends on your industry, keyword breadth, and match types. Accounts using Broad match keywords tend to need more negatives than accounts using only Exact match.

Google allows up to 5,000 negative keywords per campaign and 20 shared negative keyword lists with up to 5,000 keywords each.

Adding negatives that are too broad and block relevant traffic (e.g., adding "repair" as a negative for a plumber who does offer repair services), not reviewing the Search Terms Report regularly, forgetting that negative keywords do not use close variants (unlike regular keywords, negative broad match only blocks the exact words you specify and does not block synonyms or misspellings), and using only one match type for all negatives.