What are negative keywords?
Short answer
Negative keywords are words or phrases you add to a Google Ads campaign to tell Google not to show your ad when a search contains them. A plumber might add "salary" or "supply" so the ad stays off searches from job seekers and parts shoppers. They are the main way to stop paying for irrelevant clicks.
Negative keywords are words or phrases you add to a Google Ads campaign to tell Google not to show your ad when a search contains them. A regular keyword says “show me for this”. A negative keyword says “leave me out of that”. They are the main way to stop paying for searches that were never going to become a job.
An example from a plumbing account
A plumbing company bidding on the word “plumber” can be matched to many searches that contain it and have nothing to do with hiring one. Some hypothetical searches, and the negative that blocks each:
| Search someone typed | Who is searching | Negative to add |
|---|---|---|
| plumber salary san diego | A job seeker | salary |
| plumbing supply store kearny mesa | Someone buying parts | supply |
| plumbing apprenticeship | Someone looking for training | apprenticeship |
| how to fix a running toilet | Someone doing it themselves | how to |
| another company’s name | Someone looking for that company | That name, if you don’t want those clicks |
Without the negatives, a click from any of these is charged like a click from a customer.
Where the list comes from
Start with the search terms report, which shows what people typed before clicking your ad. Guessing in advance catches the obvious words, such as “jobs” and “salary”. The report catches the ones nobody would guess. I read it on a regular schedule and add what doesn’t belong. Google doesn’t show every search in that report, so some waste stays hidden, which is one more reason to keep keyword matching tight in the first place. A negative can be added to one ad group, to a whole campaign, or to a shared list that is applied to several campaigns.
How negatives match
Google reads a negative keyword more literally than a regular one. Google stretches a regular keyword to cover searches with a similar meaning. It doesn’t stretch negatives the same way, so blocking “job” may not block “careers” or “hiring”, and you add those yourself. Negatives also come in match types:
- A broad negative blocks searches that contain all of its words, in any order.
- A phrase negative blocks searches that contain its words in the same order.
- An exact negative blocks only that search, with nothing added.
Google has adjusted the details over the years, including how misspellings are handled, so read its current help page before assuming a variation is covered.
How negatives go wrong
A negative that is too broad blocks customers. Add “free” to keep out freebie hunters and you also disappear for “free estimate water heater”. Add “cheap” and you lose people who would have paid a fair price. Before adding a negative, I check which past searches it would have blocked and whether any of them led to a call. The second problem is conflict. A negative sitting in a shared list can block a keyword you’re paying to run, and that keyword quietly stops being shown.
Where they don’t apply
Negative keywords belong to search campaigns. Local Services Ads (LSA) have no keywords at all, so the equivalent there’s switching off job types and areas in the profile. Performance Max, Google’s automated campaign type, has had limited and changing support for negatives, so check what your account allows today.
Negatives also decide only which searches you pay for. They do nothing about where the ad is shown geographically. That’s a targeting setting, the one behind ads showing in cities you don’t serve. Nor do they fix junk leads from Google Ads when the clicks look right but the calls are poor.