Negative keywords in Google Ads: match types, lists and examples that save budget

Negative keywords in Google Ads are terms for which your ad should not show, even when the query matches your keywords. They keep budget from going to clicks by people looking for free templates, jobs or instructions, and direct it to people who want to buy. Below we cover match types, where to add negatives, shared lists, negatives in Performance Max and the mistakes we see most often.

What negative keywords are and why you add them

A negative keyword is a term that blocks your ad from showing for any query containing that term. It works in reverse to a regular keyword: a regular one invites queries into the campaign, a negative one filters them out. Without negatives, broad and phrase match attract queries only loosely related to the offer, and each click costs the same whatever the user intended.

Negatives are needed in every Search and Shopping campaign, and in Performance Max they work on search and shopping traffic. The broader the match and the more automated the bidding strategy, the more queries pass through the filter, so the more it matters that the filter exists.

What match types do negative keywords have

Negative keywords have three match types: broad, phrase and exact, and each blocks a different range of queries. Broad blocks a query if it contains all the negative's words in any order, phrase requires those words in the given order, and exact works only when the query is identical to the negative. One more difference from regular keywords: negatives do not cover plurals, inflected forms or misspellings.

A practical rule follows: a broad negative made of several words is wider than it looks, because it is enough that all those words appear anywhere in the query. A one-word negative such as “free” blocks every query with that word, but not “for nothing” or “freebie”, because those are different words. So variants and synonyms go in as separate entries.

What to exclude first

Start by excluding queries that signal no intent to buy or a search for something other than your offer. These groups repeat in most industries, so it is worth adding them before launch and filling in the rest after the first weeks of data.

• Free seekers: free, no cost, download, template, sample.
• Job seekers: job, career, internship, recruitment, salary.
• Knowledge seekers: how to do it yourself, instructions, tutorial, course, definition, what is.
• Used and cheaper alternatives: used, outlet, second hand, replacement, marketplaces.
• Service instead of purchase: repair, service, warranty claim, manufacturer contact, login.
• A different meaning of the phrase: words from another industry that share a name with your offer.

Exclude competitor names only if you do not run a separate campaign on their brands. Excluding your own brand from a generic campaign is a deliberate decision about splitting traffic, which we describe in the article on why ROAS in Performance Max can be inflated.

Where to find negative keywords and how often to review them

The best source of negatives is the search terms report in Google Ads, because it shows the real queries that triggered your ads, with clicks, cost and conversions. A list invented before launch covers only what you foresee, while the report shows what users actually typed. Queries are often surprising: the same phrase attracts buyers and researchers.

• First month: review the report weekly, because most wasted queries show up at the start.
• After that: every two weeks, and once a month in a stable account.
• Sorting: by cost, descending, so you begin with the queries that spent the most.
• Exclusion rule: a query with no conversions that cost 2–3 times the target cost per conversion is a candidate for exclusion.
• Queries with a small sample: leave them until data accumulates, instead of excluding after one click.

When excluding, look at the whole query, not a single word. “Furnace installation price” may be worthless in one industry and the best query in another. Before you exclude a word, check that it does not appear in queries that converted, because a broad negative cuts them all at once.

Where to add negatives: ad group, campaign, list, account

Negatives can be added at ad group, campaign, shared list and account level, and the level decides how many campaigns one change affects. An ad group negative works only in that group, a campaign negative only in that campaign, and a shared list can serve many campaigns at once, including Performance Max.

Google sets the limits: according to its official limits page an account can have 20 shared negative lists, and one list holds up to 5,000 words. A campaign can have up to 10,000 negative keywords. In practice the limits rarely bind; what is easy is getting lost among dozens of unnamed lists, so name them by purpose, for example “General negatives” or “Jobs and recruitment”.

Do negative keywords work in Performance Max

Yes, a Performance Max campaign accepts negative keywords, but they only affect search and shopping traffic. The limit in this campaign type used to be 100; according to current Google information it is 10,000 per campaign, the same as in Search. Shared negative lists can also be attached to Performance Max.

Negatives do not affect impressions on YouTube, Gmail, Discover or the display network, so do not treat them as full control of the campaign. Google also recommends checking the effect of negatives on reach and conversions, because Performance Max is designed to find effective search traffic on its own. Look at the campaign from the brand angle too: brand exclusions and brand lists let you separate traffic from people who would have found you anyway. We explain why this changes the reported result in the article on inflated ROAS in Performance Max, and how campaign types differ in the comparison of Performance Max and Search.

The most common mistakes with negative keywords

• An overly broad broad-match negative: a single popular word also cuts queries that converted.
• Excluding a word from your own keyword list: the ad stops showing for the very terms you chose as the campaign target.
• No variants or synonyms: a negative does not cover plurals or misspellings, so “free” will not stop “for nothing”.
• One giant list without notes: after six months nobody knows why a word is there.
• Excluding after one click: a decision from a sample of one query cuts traffic before data appears.
• No conflict check: an account-level negative can block a keyword in one of the campaigns.

Negatives are one of the settings we put in order at the start of an engagement, when we run Google Ads campaigns. As a marketing agency we begin with the search terms report from the last few weeks and build negative lists, which we then maintain in a rhythm of reviews. What the account management itself costs we cover in how much Google Ads costs, and how to set the campaign goal once traffic is cleaned up in the article on target CPA and target ROAS.