Every time someone clicks your ad and bounces straight off the page, you’ve paid for an irrelevant search.
It might be a student researching the topic, someone looking for a free version of what you sell, or just someone who searched for something loosely related but had no intention of buying.
But there is a way you can avoid this. It is through negative keywords.
Stop those clicks from draining your budget before they start with this trusted guide from digital marketing experts.
What Are Negative Keywords?
A negative keyword is a word or phrase that tells Google not to show your ad when it appears in a search query.
Negative keywords are used to filter out traffic from people who are unlikely to convert.
This may be the wrong intent, the wrong stage of the purchase process, or simply the wrong product or service.
A broad campaign will often pick up informational searches alongside transactional ones.
People often search keywords using words like “DIY”, “tips”, “how to”, and “cheap”. These signal someone researching rather than buying, and they’re not part of your target audience, regardless of which service you’re advertising.
Adding them as negative keyword terms stops ads from showing to people who won’t convert, so your impressions go to queries that are actually worth bidding on.
Negative keywords help at every level of a Google Ads account.
Without them, a broad keyword in your campaign will trigger your ad for all kinds of searches that burn through budget without producing any return.
How Negative Keywords Work
When a user searches on Google, the platform checks your campaign’s keywords and negative keywords at the same time.
If the search query matches a negative keyword, your ad won’t show, regardless of whether the query also matches a positive keyword elsewhere in the campaign.
Negative keywords work by removing impressions where your ad could still appear but probably shouldn’t.
Negative keywords apply across both search and shopping inventory in Google Ads, so the same logic holds whether you’re running text ads or product listing ads.
They don’t damage your Quality Score or ad rank for the searches where your ad does appear.
Negatives prevent your ads from showing to people outside your intended audience as soon as they’re live, and wasted spend falls fairly quickly after.
The key variable in how negative keywords work is the match type.
Each match type controls how broadly a negative keyword filters out search queries, from blocking any search that contains a word to blocking only a single exact phrase.
Negative Keyword Match Types
There are three negative keyword match types in Google Ads.
Picking the right match type for each negative keyword matters.
Negative broad match
A negative broad match keyword blocks your ad from any search that contains all the words in your negative keyword, in any order.
If your broad match negative keyword is “free consultation”, your ad won’t show for “free online consultation”, “consultation free Glasgow”, or any query that includes both words together.
Your ad could still show if someone searches just “free” or just “consultation” on their own, since negative broad match only fires when the search contains all of your negative keyword terms in the same query.
Unlike positive broad match, a negative broad match keyword does not extend to similar or related terms. It only blocks searches where all the words are present.
A broad keyword used as a negative is the most permissive of the three match types.
It works well as a starting point for general exclusions, though tighter control over specific query calls for phrase or exact match instead.
Negative phrase match
A negative phrase match keyword blocks your ad when the exact keyword phrase appears in the search query in order, even if other words appear before or after it.
A negative phrase match keyword set to “free delivery” would block searches like “order with free delivery” or “free delivery on all orders”, but it wouldn’t block “delivery for free” because the word order is different.
Use phrase or exact match negatives when you need more control over which specific searches you’re excluding.
A negative phrase match keyword is useful for multi-word terms where the sequence matters.
It lets you be more precise than broad negative while still blocking a reasonable range of query variations.
Negative exact match
A negative exact match keyword blocks your ad only when someone searches for the exact keyword phrase with no other words added.
If your negative exact match keyword is “estate agent fees”, your ad won’t show when someone searches “estate agent fees” precisely. But it will show for “how much are estate agent fees” or “reduce estate agent fees”.
An exact keyword phrase as a negative gives you the tightest control of any negative match type.
A negative exact match keyword is useful when a specific keyword phrase is irrelevant on its own but could be acceptable in a longer search context.
Show if the search query contains additional words by using exact match as your negative.
You block the bare phrase while leaving the door open for queries where it appears alongside other terms that indicate a different intent.
When a term is considered negative only in its isolated form, exact match is the right call.
How to Build a Negative Keyword List
Investigate your Search Term Report
The search term report is the first place to go when you want to find negative keywords.
Go to the Keywords section of your campaign, select Search Terms, and you’ll see every actual query that triggered your ads.
Use the search terms report to identify queries that produced impressions but no conversions, then choose to add the irrelevant ones to your list.
Add them to your list by selecting the term and clicking “Add as negative keyword” directly from the report.
Using Keyword Planner
Keyword planner is a second useful source of keyword ideas at the research stage.
Run your main campaign keywords through it and look for variations that people might search for but that don’t match your intent.
Terms like “what is”, “meaning of”, “free”, “cheap”, “DIY”, and “how to” often appear in the results and signal informational searches rather than commercial ones.
If you identify terms that clearly belong in a different category to what you’re selling, create a negative keyword list that includes them before your campaign goes live.
Build Up A List
Always start your keyword list with the obvious keywords to avoid for your sector.
Then grow it based on what the search term report reveals over the first few weeks of activity.
Add them to your list as you spot them: don’t wait for a monthly review if the report is showing obvious waste mid-week.
A strong negative keyword list that includes brand names of competitors, free or trial-related modifiers, and informational prefixes will usually produce a visible improvement in conversion rate within the first campaign cycle.
Use the search terms report consistently, add new negative keywords as you go, and the list builds into a genuine filter that improves performance over time.
Levels of Negative Keywords
It is important to know that negative keywords can be applied at three levels in Google Ads. Where you apply them determines how broadly the exclusions take effect.
Account-Level Negative Keywords
Account-level negative keywords apply across your entire Google Ads account.
An account-level list of negative keywords is useful for terms you never want your ads to show for. Regardless of which campaign is running or not.
Common account-level keywords include:
- Competitor brand names
- Generic terms unrelated to your business
- Common informational searches terms (i.e. guide, tips, DIY, etc.)
Why do account-level keywords matter? They are time saving for businesses.
It saves you from having to duplicate the same negatives across every campaign individually.
Campaign-Level Negative Keywords
Campaign-level negatives apply only to a specific campaign.
They are useful for anything more specific to a particular product or audience segment that doesn’t need to be excluded account-wide.
Ad Group-Level Negative Keywords
Ad group-level negative keywords are applied within a specific ad group inside a campaign.
Ad group negatives are the most targeted option.
They cover only a specific set of ads inside a campaign, not the campaign as a whole. This gives you the flexibility to run different strategies within the same account without them interfering with each other.
Using a Shared Negative Keyword List
An account-level list is a sensible starting point, with campaign and ad group negatives layered on top for anything more specific.
If you manage multiple campaigns for different products or locations, using a shared negative keyword list through the Shared Library keeps your exclusions consistent without manual duplication.
This means you update the list in one place and the changes apply everywhere it’s attached.
How to Add Negative Keywords in Google Ads
To add negative keywords in Google Ads, navigate to the Keywords section of your campaign or ad group. Then select the Negative Keywords tab.
From there, you can add a negative keyword directly at the campaign or ad group level, or create a negative keyword list in the Shared Library and attach it to multiple campaigns at once.
To create a shared list, go to Tools and Settings in your Google Ads account, then Shared Library, then Negative Keyword Lists.
Name your list, add the new negative keyword terms you want to include, and then apply the list to the campaigns it should cover.
Google Ads help documentation has step-by-step guides with screenshots for each part of the process if you need more detail.
Review your search term report every week or two and add the negative keywords that surfaced during that period.
Ensure your ads are being triggered by searches that match your actual campaign goals, not just by searches that loosely resemble your keywords.
Make sure you keep the list maintained and it will get more accurate over time, steadily cutting the share of the budget going to irrelevant searches.
Get a Digital Marketing Team to Find Negative Keywords for You
Not sure how to start using negative keywords to help your paid ad campaigns? Not to worry! That is exactly what the Soapbox team is here for.
The Soapbox Digital team works with businesses across Scotland and the UK, managing Google Ads campaigns, site speed, SEO, keyword research, and wider digital marketing strategies. We take the marketing work off your plate so you can focus on running your business.
If your campaigns aren’t delivering the results you’re after, get in touch today and we’ll help you turn that around.
Call us on 0141 429 1356 to find out more.
