What Are Negative Keywords in Google Ads?

What is a negative keyword? Google puts it plainly: negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. You are telling Google where not to spend your money.

A shoe store selling new trainers might add "repair", "second hand" and "jobs" as negatives. Nobody typing those is about to buy a new pair. That is the whole idea of negative keywords in Google Ads.

Negatives use match types too, but they work a little differently from normal keywords. Google uses the negative "running shoes" as its own example.

Negative broad match blocks a search that contains all of your words, in any order. So it blocks "blue running shoes" and "shoes running", but not "running shoe".

Negative phrase match blocks a search that contains your words in the same order. So it blocks "blue running shoes", but not "shoes running".

Negative exact match blocks only that exact search, with no extra words. So it blocks "running shoes" and nothing else.

One rule catches almost everyone. Google says negative keywords do not match to close variants. Block "running shoes" and the singular "running shoe" can still trigger your ad. Add the plural, the singular and any synonyms yourself. Google handles casing and misspellings for you.

Most big public lists are built for lead gen. A store needs its own. These are the groups we see waste money in ecom accounts most often, as a starting point, not a paste-in list.

Job seekers: jobs, careers, salary, hiring. Research and how-to: how to make, DIY, pattern, diagram, manual. Free and pirate searches: free, download, PDF. Wrong condition: used, second hand, refurbished, repair, if you only sell new. Wrong model or size you do not stock. Rival brand names you cannot win on.

Be careful with price words. "Cheap" can be your best customer if you sell on price. Read your own search terms before you block a word you think is bad.

The level decides how far a negative reaches. Ad group level protects one tight set of ads. Campaign level protects everything in that campaign. An account-level list is the big one: Google says it applies automatically to all eligible search and shopping inventory in the relevant campaign types.

Google also lets you build shared negative keyword lists and apply one list to many campaigns at once. Its help page sets the limits: up to 20 lists in an account, up to 5,000 negative keywords per list, and up to 1,000 negative keywords at account level.

The rule of thumb is simple. Terms that could never sell anything you stock go on the account list. Terms that are wrong for one campaign but fine for another go at campaign level. Only go down to the ad group when the same word is good in one ad group and bad in the next.

You do not need a negative keyword finder tool to start. The best source is free and already in your account: the search terms report. It shows what people really typed before they clicked.

Sort it by cost. Read the top of the list. Any search with real spend and no sale, that could never buy what you sell, is a negative you have not added yet. On a small account that is twenty minutes a week and it works fine. A tool earns its place when the report is longer than you will ever read.

Most people miss the close-variant line above. Block one spelling and the next spelling is still live. So blocking a word rarely finishes the job. You block the term, then you read the report again next week and block what got through.

The other trap runs the other way. Google warns that if you use too many negative keywords, your ads might reach fewer customers. A giant inherited block list is one of the quietest ways an ecom account starves itself. Read the list you inherited before you add to it. And never block your own brand name by accident while cleaning up a broad list.

By hand it is a weekly job. Scaley does it daily instead. We build it, so judge this claim harder than the rest. Scaley Suite reads the search terms every day, names each bad term with the spend already attached, and proposes the exclusion. Nothing is excluded until you say yes to it. Scaley Media Buyer is read-only: ask it which terms are wasting money and it answers from the live account, but it cannot add the negative for you.

If you would rather a tool just applied the change for you, look at Opteo. It says its improvements can be pushed live to Google Ads in seconds, and it lists "Exclude Bad Traffic" as one of its jobs. That is a real difference, and it is not in our favour when speed is what you want. Scaley stops and waits for your yes on purpose.