The Beginner’s Guide to Using Negative Keywords

Carefully choosing keywords and creating enticing ads are important, but aren’t the only part of highly targeted and profitable paid ad campaigns.

You also need to use negative keywords to block unwanted clicks and make your budget go further.

In this article, I’ll cover the different types of negative keywords, why they’re important, how to find them, and how to add them to your campaigns. 

If you’re ready to create more profitable campaigns, then let’s begin. 

Key Takeaways

• Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing up for irrelevant search terms, improving the efficiency of your ad spend.
• Using negative keywords can boost your overall ROI by focusing on relevant traffic and minimizing wasteful clicks.
• Regularly updating and refining your negative keyword list ensures that your ads align with your target audience’s intent.
• Negative keywords enhance the relevance of your ad campaigns, improving Quality Scores and reducing your cost per click (CPC).
• Strategically applying negative keywords can lead to better ad positioning by filtering out unqualified traffic.

Table of Contents

• Key Takeaways
• What Are Negative Keywords?
• How Negative Keywords Work in Paid Search
• Types of Negative Keywords
  • Negative Broad Match Keywords
  • Negative Phrase Match Keywords
  • Negative Exact Match Keywords
• Why Negative Keywords Are Important for Your Campaigns
• How to Find and Choose Negative Keywords
  • Analyze Your Search Terms Report
  • Use Google Keyword Planner
  • Study Competitor Ads
  • Review Industry Terms
  • Consider User Intent
• Using Negative Keywords in Google Ads
  • Adding keywords to search terms report
  • Adding keywords from the Google Ads dashboard
• Negative Keywords Best Practices
• FAQs
• Conclusion

What Are Negative Keywords?

First things first: what are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are words or phrases that prevent Google and other search platforms from showing your ad.

Ad platforms don’t always get their targeting right, which means your ad can appear in unrelated or inappropriate situations. That might be in searches for:

• Products you don’t sell
• Discount codes or vouchers
• Product reviews
• Information or how-to-style content 
• Adult content 

You may lose money whenever someone clicks on your ad in one of these searches. Negative keywords can eliminate these irrelevant clicks. 

If I’m a fashion retailer that doesn’t cater to children, I can use negative keywords like “kids’ clothes” and “children’s clothing” to stop my store’s ads from appearing in results for these search terms. 

Not only will I save money, but I can also use negative keywords to boost my ad quality score, protect my brand image, and improve my search campaign’s return on investment. 

How Negative Keywords Work in Paid Search

Google Ads’ negative keywords work in the opposite way to standard keywords. Rather than asking ad platforms to show your ad for these queries, negative keywords tell ad platforms not to show your ad. 

You let ad platforms know which keywords you want to exclude using a negative keywords list. It’s a list of all the terms you don’t want your ads to show for and looks something like the below:

When you upload a negative keywords list to Google Ads, Amazon Ads, or any other PPC platform, you tell the network not to show your ad to anyone who includes these words in their query. 

Types of Negative Keywords

Negative keyword match types determine how many queries ad platforms exclude. There are three types of negative keywords in Google:

• Negative broad match
• Negative phase match
• Negative exact match keywords

Let’s look at each of these in more detail below:

Negative Broad Match Keywords

Negative broad match is the default setting in Google Ads. 

When you add a broad match negative keyword, Google won’t show your ad for searches containing any negative terms, even if they are in a different order or additional words are present. 

For example, if your negative broad match keyword is “hiking boots”, your ads won’t appear in the following searches:

• Hiking boots
• Boots hiking
• Hiking boots for men
• Best hiking boot

However, your ad will still show for “hiking boot”, “boots for hikers”, and “hiking trails”.

Negative Phrase Match Keywords

Negative phrase match keywords prevent ads from showing in searches that contain the exact keywords in the right order. Searches with additional words or characters will also be excluded if the correct order is kept. 

Using the same example, a negative phrase match keyword of “hiking boots” will mean your ads won’t appear in the following searches:

• Hiking boots
• Hiking boots for men
• Best hiking boots

However, your ad will still appear for “boots hiking”, “hiking boot”, “boots for hikers”, and “hiking trails”.

Negative Exact Match Keywords

Negative exact match is the least strictest option. Google only prevents ads from showing if the search term is an exact match of your negative keyword, with no additional terms before or after. 

That means your ad will show for all of the previous examples we’ve used above apart from “hiking boots”:

Why Negative Keywords Are Important for Your Campaigns

You’ll want to add negative keywords to your Google Ads campaign for several reasons:

• Improve ad relevance: Excluding terms that aren’t relevant to your offering means only your target audience sees your ads. 
• Eliminate irrelevant clicks: By only showing your ads to relevant users, you’re going to reduce the number of garbage clicks your ads receive drastically. 
• Reduce wasted spend: A more targeted audience and fewer garbage clicks means less wasted ad spend. 
• Increase ROI: When you get more relevant clicks and waste less money, you’ll get more mileage from your budget and, hopefully, a higher return on your investment. 
• Boost your quality score: Google uses relevancy and clickthrough rates to calculate your ad’s quality score — two things that improve when you use negative keywords.  

See the value in negative keywords? Then, let’s look at how to find as many as possible. 

How to Find and Choose Negative Keywords

There are some negative keywords almost every business should add to their campaigns by default. These include terms like:

• Free
• Cheap
• Voucher
• YouTube
• Anything adult-related

But what about finding ones specific to your brand? 

Here are five of my favorite ways to build a negative keywords list. 

Analyze Your Search Terms Report

Use Google’s search terms report to discover a list of queries searchers have used to trigger your ads. 

You can find the search terms report in your Google Ads dashboard under Campaigns > Insights and reports > Search terms.  

This is a great way to spot irrelevant keywords already triggering your ads. You can add keywords directly to your negative keyword list without leaving the report. 

Source: Clickcease

Use Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a free tool to find negative keywords. 

Click “Discover new keywords”, enter your main keyword, and click “Get results.”

It will generate a list of keywords like the one below:

Scan the list for irrelevant or inappropriate keywords and add them to your negative keyword list.

If I’m an outdoor retailer that doesn’t stock waterproof hiking boots or walking shoes, I’ll want to exclude them, for example.

Study Competitor Ads

You can learn a lot from your competitors, including which keywords to avoid. If you have competitors that offer similar — but not identical — services or products, a competitive keyword analysis could unearth dozens of search terms to exclude. 

The easiest way to run this research is with Semrush’s Advertising Research tool. Just enter a competitor’s domain name into the search bar and hit enter. 

Scroll down to the “Paid Search Positions” section and you’ll find a list of hundreds of terms your competitor bids on. Make a note of any that aren’t relevant to your offering and add them to your list. 

Review Industry Terms

You know your industry better than anyone, so spend some time Googling relevant terms and see if you can find any words or phrases that you wouldn’t want people using to find your business. 

Yes, this can get a little sweaty, but you’ll be surprised at the amount of results Google throws up that aren’t relevant. 

Take the term “rank tracking”, for example:

This is a core feature of my SEO tool so it’s a keyword I might want to bid on.

Looking closely at the second result, however, I notice Google highlighting white labeling — something my tool doesn’t offer.  

I’d definitely want to add this to my list to avoid wasting money on agency owners who need a tool they can slap their brand on.  

Consider User Intent

Not everyone wants to buy your products when they search for a query containing one of your keywords.

They could be looking for:

• A second-hand version of your product
• A discount code
• Advice on repairing a product they already own
• Reviews

User intent matters, in other words, and analyzing it is how Jared Silverman, Senior  Director of Paid Search at NP Digital makes our ad campaigns more efficient:

“One approach I find valuable is using them to filter out irrelevant or low-converting search terms, like excluding ‘free’ or ‘tutorial’ when promoting a paid product. This ensures that our ads reach users with higher intent to convert.”

Using Negative Keywords in Google Ads

There are two ways to add negative keywords to your Google Ads campaigns:

• From the search terms report
• From the Google Ads dashboard

Adding keywords to search terms report

Select the keywords you want to add as negative keywords by checking the box to the left.

Source: SEMrush

Then click “Add as negative keyword” in the report’s header. 

Finally, choose whether to add the keywords to an existing campaign, ad group, or negative keyword list, or to create a new list. 

Adding them at the campaign level means you’ll avoid searches containing these keywords across your entire campaign. Adding them at the ad group level restricts keywords to a specific ad group. 

Click “Save” to finish. 

Adding keywords from the Google Ads dashboard

Add negative keywords from the Google Ads dashboard by clicking Campaigns > Audiences, keywords, and content > Search keywords. 

Click on “Negative search keywords”, then click the blue + button.

Enter keywords on separate lines, indicating the keyword match type using the following characters:

• No special characters for broad match keywords: hiking boots
• Add quotations for phrase match keywords: “hiking boots”
• Add square brackets for exact match keywords: [hiking boots]

Click “Save to a new or existing list”, choose a list or give your new list a name, and then click “Save”.

Negative Keywords Best Practices

Get more from your negative keyword strategy using the following best practices:

• Use plural and singular keywords: Depending on your negative keyword type, your ad can still show for plural and singular versions of your keyword. It makes sense to add both versions to block unwanted traffic to both. 
• Add low-performing keywords to your negative keyword list: If one or more keywords get a lot of clicks but few conversions, consider adding them as negative keywords to make your budget go further.
• Experiment with different match types: Google uses “broad match” as the default negative keyword match type, but it may not be the best option for your brand. It can rule out many perfectly good keywords, in particular. So mix things up and try one of the other match types if impressions or clicks dry up.
• Don’t stop collecting negative keywords: Keep using the above strategies to find more keywords in the future. User intent can change over time, and new search terms appear, which means there will always be an opportunity to improve your campaign’s targeting and relevance. 

FAQs

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are words or phrases that prevent Google and other ad networks from showing your ads in specific searches. For example, if I add “free” as a negative keyword to my ad campaigns, Google won’t show my ads for any queries containing that word.

How to add negative keywords in Google Ads

You can add negative keywords in Google Ads from the search terms report or from the platform’s dashboard. 
You must choose whether to add negative keywords to all campaigns or specific ad groups. Adding them at the campaign level will apply to every ad and ad group. Adding them at the ad group level will only apply to that specific ad group.

How to find negative keywords

You can find negative keywords using the following methods:

Searching keywords yourself and finding instances where the user intent is wrong

Reading through your ads’ search terms report for irrelevant queries

Using Google Keyword Planner to find irrelevant terms Google thinks are related to your keyword

Studying your competitors’ ads

Conclusion

When building a profitable paid media campaign, bidding on relevant keywords is only half the battle. To maximize the benefits of paid advertising and drive more conversions, you must add negative keywords to every campaign. 
So open your Google Ads console, check your search terms report, run a search in the Keyword Planner, and study your competitors to find as many irrelevant search terms as possible. The more negative keywords you add, the more targeted your ad campaign becomes!