Negative keywords in Google Ads: a complete guide to stopping wasted clicks

A keyword tells Google when to show your ad. A negative keyword tells Google when not to. Of the two, negatives are the ones most small business accounts are missing, and the ones that save the most money per minute spent.

What a negative keyword does

Add "jobs" as a negative and your ad stops showing for any search containing the word jobs: plumber jobs, plumbing jobs near me, apprentice plumber jobs. The people typing those were never going to book you. Without the negative, you pay every time one of them clicks.

Negatives do not stop your ad showing for related words. A negative "job" does not block "jobs", and a negative "plumber" does not block "plumbing". This is the opposite of ordinary keywords, which Google matches loosely. Negatives are matched tightly, so you have to list the variations yourself.

The three negative match types

Negative broad match is the default. The ad will not show if the search contains all the words in your negative, in any order. Negative broad "free quote" blocks "free quote plumber" and "plumber quote free", but not "free plumber" on its own.

Negative phrase match, written in quotes, blocks searches that contain the words in that order. "Plumbing course" blocks "online plumbing course" but not "course plumbing".

Negative exact match, written in square brackets, blocks only that exact search. [plumber] would block someone searching just the word plumber and nothing else. Rarely useful; mostly for a single word you do want in longer searches but not on its own.

For most negatives, broad is right: one word, and every search containing it is gone.

Where to put them

Ad group level for terms that are wrong for one ad group but right for another. "Commercial" might be a negative in your residential ad group and a keyword in your commercial one.

Campaign level for terms that are wrong across a whole campaign.

A shared negative keyword list, under Tools and then Shared library, for terms that are wrong everywhere. Build one list, apply it to every campaign, and every new campaign starts protected. This is where most of your negatives should live.

A starter list for a local service business

Add these as broad match negatives to a shared list on day one, before the first click:

• Job seekers: jobs, job, career, careers, hiring, salary, wage, apprentice, apprenticeship, vacancy
• Learners: course, courses, training, certification, school, how to, DIY, tutorial, youtube
• Freebie hunters: free, cheap, cheapest, discount, coupon
• Researchers: what is, definition, meaning, wiki, reviews, forum, reddit
• Wrong product: used, second hand, parts, supplies, wholesale, manufacturer
• Your competitors' names, if you do not want to pay to appear beside them
• Every town, city and state you do not serve that shares a name or a border with one you do

Adjust for your trade. A roofer adds "shingles for sale" and "roofing felt"; a dentist adds "school", "how to become" and "dentist near me jobs"; a therapist adds "degree", "salary" and "vs psychiatrist". The search terms report will show you the rest.

Keeping the list alive

The starter list catches the obvious. The rest comes from the search terms report, read every week: sort by cost, find the terms that spent without an enquiry, add them. Over a few months the list grows into a few hundred terms, and the share of budget going on searches you want rises with it.

Two cautions. Do not add negatives from guesswork alone; a word you think is irrelevant may be how real customers describe your service. And check the list twice a year for negatives that have started blocking good searches, because your services change and so does the way people search for them.

A worked example

An electrician in Boise adds the starter list above. In the first month the search terms report shows money going on "electrician license requirements", "electrical engineer", "ev charger for sale" and "electrician in Boise Oklahoma". Four new negatives: license, engineer, "for sale", oklahoma. Each one took thirty seconds, and each one keeps paying every week the ads run.

The free check below does this part for you: paste your website, see what would be fixed first, and once the account is connected, the search terms that spent without an enquiry are found weekly and blocked, with your approval on Core or automatically on Autopilot.