Most Google Ads accounts have a negative keyword problem. Not because advertisers don’t know negative keywords exist — they do. The problem is the list is too short, built once and never updated, or missing the categories of waste that compound every week.
Without negative keywords, your ad budget funds searches that will never convert. The math compounds: 20% irrelevant traffic in month one becomes 20% of an increasingly high budget by month six.
What Negative Keywords Actually Do
Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing when a search includes a specific term. If you’re running ads for a premium web design service and someone searches “free website builder,” you don’t want to pay for that click. Add “free” as a negative keyword and that search doesn’t trigger your ad.
This sounds simple. The execution is less so, because “irrelevant” is relative to your specific offer — and the searches that waste your budget aren’t always obvious in advance.
The search term report (under Reports → Predefined Reports → Basic → Search Terms) shows you the actual queries that triggered your ads. This is the source document for your negative keyword list. Review it weekly for the first 90 days of any campaign, then monthly once traffic patterns stabilize.
The Categories of Negative Keywords You Need
Research and Comparison Searches
Searches containing “how to,” “what is,” “DIY,” “yourself,” “tutorial,” “guide,” and “examples” typically indicate someone who wants information, not a service provider.
If you’re a service business, someone searching “how to manage Google Ads yourself” is not your customer right now. They might be later. They’re not buying today.
Add negatives for: how to, how do, tutorial, guide, example, template, DIY, yourself, free, learn, what is, definition.
Price-Sensitivity Signals
“Cheap,” “affordable,” “budget,” “low cost,” and “inexpensive” signal price-sensitive buyers. If your service has a premium price point, these searchers will click your ad and leave when they see your pricing.
This doesn’t mean you should always exclude them. If you’re price-competitive, price-sensitivity searches might be your best customers. But be deliberate about it.
Job and Career Searches
Searches containing “jobs,” “careers,” “salary,” “how to become,” “resume,” and “training” are from people looking for employment in your field — not buyers of your service. This is a common waste category for any business in a profession with a job market.
A Google Ads agency that doesn’t exclude “Google Ads specialist jobs” is paying for applications, not leads.
Wrong Geography
If you serve a specific region and your geographic targeting isn’t perfectly dialed, searches from other areas can still trigger your ads. Add negatives for cities, states, and countries you don’t serve — and audit your geographic settings. Location targeting in Google Ads isn’t a hard boundary by default; it’s a signal that the algorithm adjusts.
Competitor Brand Names (Sometimes)
Someone searching for your competitor by name is probably going to click your competitor’s ad. You can bid on competitor terms, but without careful ad copy and a compelling reason-to-switch offer, competitor-brand traffic usually converts poorly and costs more.
Exclude competitor names unless you have a specific “switching” campaign built for that traffic.
Related Products and Services You Don’t Offer
A web design agency that doesn’t do logo design should exclude “logo,” “branding,” “graphic design,” and related terms. Not because they’re bad searches — they’re great searches for someone who does that work. They’re just irrelevant to you.
Map your service offering and build exclusions around anything adjacent but outside your scope.
Match Types for Negative Keywords
Negative keywords follow the same match type logic as standard keywords:
Broad negative: Excludes any search containing the word, in any order, in any phrase. Use for obvious irrelevant terms like “free” or “job.”
Phrase negative: Excludes searches containing the exact phrase in that order. ”[-how to]” as a phrase negative excludes “how to build a website” but not “website building how.”
Exact negative: Excludes only that exact search. Use for specific searches you know are irrelevant without wanting to exclude the broader term.
For most negative keyword work, broad and phrase negatives handle the bulk of exclusions. Use exact negatives when you need to exclude a specific search but can’t risk the broad version blocking relevant traffic.
Negative Keyword Lists vs. Campaign-Level Negatives
Google lets you create shared negative keyword lists that can be applied across multiple campaigns. Use them.
Build a master exclusion list (job/career terms, DIY/tutorial terms, competitor names if applicable, geography exclusions) and apply it to all campaigns. This prevents the same irrelevant searches from affecting every campaign independently and makes maintenance far more efficient.
Campaign-level negatives handle anything specific to that campaign’s intent. An ad group selling premium services should have its own “cheap” and “affordable” exclusions layered on top of the shared list.
Building Your Initial Negative Keyword List
Before your campaign launches, build your starter list from these sources:
Keyword research tools: When you research your target keywords, the tools show you related searches. Many of those related searches are irrelevant — put them on your negative list now, not after you’ve paid for those clicks.
Common sense categories: The job/career, DIY, free, competitor, and wrong-geography categories apply to almost every campaign. Add them before launch.
Your sales team: Ask the people who talk to your customers what questions indicate someone who won’t buy. Those question patterns translate directly to negative keywords.
Competitor analysis: Look at what searches your competitors are appearing for. Some of those will be irrelevant to your offer and should be pre-excluded.
The Ongoing Process
A negative keyword list is not a one-time task. Search behavior changes. Google’s broad match gets more aggressive over time. New product categories emerge. Your service offering changes.
Set a recurring weekly review of the search term report for the first 90 days. After that, monthly is sufficient for stable campaigns. When you make a significant change to campaign structure, keywords, or match types, go back to weekly until patterns stabilize.
Every time you find an irrelevant search term in your report, add it as a negative immediately and estimate how many clicks it cost you since the last review. That running estimate is the cost of delayed maintenance — and it adds up.
If you want to see how well your current account’s negative keyword list is covering the obvious categories, run a quick audit at honest.designodin.com. We look at this specifically and quantify the estimated wasted spend.
FAQ
How many negative keywords should I have? There’s no right number, but most active campaigns should have at least 50–200 negatives, and mature campaigns in competitive markets often have several hundred. The number matters less than whether you’re covering the right categories. A list of 500 negatives that doesn’t exclude obvious DIY searches is worse than a list of 100 that covers the core waste categories.
Can negative keywords accidentally block relevant traffic? Yes — this is called negative keyword conflict. If you add “design” as a broad negative and you’re a web design company, you’ve excluded yourself from many of your own target searches. Always cross-reference new negatives against your active keyword list before adding them. Google will flag conflicts in some cases, but it doesn’t catch everything.
Should I use negative keywords for branded campaigns? Branded campaigns (where you’re targeting searches for your own company name) should have a different negative list than non-branded campaigns. For branded campaigns, exclude your own keywords that aren’t brand-intent searches — competitor names, generic service terms. For non-branded campaigns, you may want to exclude your own brand name if there’s significant brand traffic that you’re capturing in a separate branded campaign.
What happens if I add a negative keyword that conflicts with an active keyword? Google will show a warning in some cases, but you can still add conflicting negatives — and the conflict will prevent that keyword from ever showing an ad. Check for conflicts under the Keywords tab by filtering for “Status: Eligible — policy” or “Below first page bid.” Conflicts also appear as “No eligible keywords” in diagnostics.
How do I handle broad match keywords without a lot of negatives? You don’t — not well. As covered in our guide to keyword match types, broad match without an aggressive negative keyword list is one of the fastest ways to deplete a campaign budget on irrelevant traffic. If you’re running broad match, your negative keyword maintenance schedule should be more intensive, not less.
How quickly do new negative keywords take effect? Immediately. Once you save a negative keyword, it prevents future ad triggering for that term. It doesn’t retroactively refund clicks already received — that spend is gone. Which is the strongest argument for building the list before launch, not after.
Negative keywords are one of the highest-leverage optimizations in any Google Ads account. Our paid search management includes a full negative keyword audit on every account we take over. See what’s in our fixed-price packages or start here.