Negative keywords guide

Negative keywords tell Google which searches should never trigger your ads. Add "jobs" as a negative and a plumbing company stops paying for people looking for plumbing jobs. Add "free" and a web designer stops paying for people hunting for free templates. It is the cheapest optimization in Google Ads: no extra spend, no creative work, just a list that grows from what your search terms report reveals.

In nearly every account I audit, a missing or neglected negative keyword list is one of the top reasons budget goes to waste. This guide explains how negatives behave, gives you a starter list by category, and shows the short weekly routine that keeps the list doing its job.

How negative keywords work

When you add a positive keyword, Google can match it to many related searches, especially with broad match. Negatives work in the opposite direction: they block searches that contain the words you specify. Two details trip people up.

First, negative keywords do not expand to close variants the way positive keywords do. Blocking "job" does not automatically block "jobs" or "hiring". You add each form you want gone.

Second, negative match types behave differently:

Most of your list will be negative broad terms for single words that never fit, plus phrase negatives for combinations that only sometimes fit.

Where to add them

You can add negatives at three levels:

• Ad group level, to steer a search toward the right ad group. If "water heater installation" keeps landing in your repair group, add it as a negative there so the installation group catches it.
• Campaign level, for terms that never fit that service.
• Shared negative lists, applied to several campaigns at once. I keep one master list of universal junk and apply it everywhere, so new campaigns start clean.

Google also offers account-level negatives, which are handy for words that should never show anywhere, including in automated campaign types.

A starter list in eight categories

Adapt this list to your business. Some words that are junk for one company are gold for another.

1. Jobs and careers: jobs, job, careers, hiring, salary, wage, resume, apprenticeship, internship.
2. Learning: course, courses, training, certificate, school, college, how to, tutorial, diploma.
3. Free and DIY: free, DIY, do it yourself, template, homemade.
4. Research only: definition, meaning, what is, wiki, history, examples, pdf.
5. Wrong product or service: services you do not offer, related trades, rental when you only sell, used when you sell new.
6. Wrong location: other cities and provinces you do not serve, when they appear in searches.
7. Marketplaces and platforms: if you are not on them, terms like Kijiji, Amazon or Facebook Marketplace.
8. Brand names you do not want: competitors you are not targeting, and product brands you do not carry.

Be careful with words like "cheap" or "cost". For some businesses, people searching for cost are serious buyers comparing quotes. For others, "cheap" brings exactly the customers who haggle and leave. Look at your own data before you block them.

The 15-minute weekly routine

The starter list catches the obvious junk. The search terms report catches everything else. Once a week:

1. Open the search terms report for the last 7 days.
2. Sort by cost, highest first.
3. Read each term and ask: would a buyer type this?
4. Add irrelevant terms as negatives at the right level, using the shortest form that blocks the junk without blocking buyers.
5. Note good searches you are not yet targeting and add them as positive keywords.

In a new account, do this twice a week for the first month. After a few months it often takes ten minutes. This is a core part of what I do in ongoing Google Ads management; it is not glamorous, but it is where much of the savings come from.

Mistakes that cost you customers

Negatives can hurt as easily as they help:

• Too broad. Adding "repair" as a negative to a sales campaign may block "furnace repair or replace", a search from someone about to buy.
• Conflicts. A negative that matches your own positive keyword silently stops that keyword. Google Ads flags some conflicts, but check after big list changes.
• Blocking your brand. Shared lists copied from another account sometimes include words in your company name.
• Set and forget. Search behaviour changes. A list that was perfect two years ago misses new junk and may block new good terms.

If you are unsure whether a term is junk, look at its conversions over a longer period before blocking it.

A Canadian twist: two languages

If you advertise in Quebec or in bilingual areas, remember that French searches need their own negatives. "Emploi", "gratuit", "cours" and "formation" are the French cousins of the usual junk, and they will not be blocked by an English list. The same goes for other languages your customers use. A business that advertises to a Punjabi-, Polish- or Ukrainian-speaking community should review search terms in those languages too, or ask someone who reads them to look over the report once a month. It takes an extra few minutes and closes a gap most accounts never notice.

How negatives connect to everything else

Cleaner traffic does more than save the cost of bad clicks. It raises your click-through rate and relevance, which tends to lower what you pay per click; I explain why in cost per click explained. It also gives automated bidding cleaner signals, so it learns faster.

Negatives are the mirror of keyword research. If you have done keyword research for a local business, you already know which words your customers use; negatives deal with the words they do not.

If your account has never been cleaned, start with the Google Ads audit checklist, or read about the other reasons Google Ads stops working. And if you would rather have someone look over the last 90 days of search terms with you, a free 30-minute consultation is enough to spot the biggest leaks.