A Guide to Negative Keywords in Google Ads: Save Money and Boost Your Campaign Efficiency

If you're not using negative keywords in your Google Ads campaigns, you might be watching your precious advertising budget trickle away. In my experience working on hundreds of campaigns, one of the biggest drains on performance I've seen is not using negative keywords effectively - or, in most cases, not at all.

This oversight leads to spending money on irrelevant traffic that never converts and stifles bottom-line growth.

Let’s dive into how to stop the leak and optimise your budget with negative keywords.

What Are Negative Keywords, and Why Are They Important?

Negative keywords are a type of keyword that prevent your ads from being triggered by certain words or phrases. Their role is critical because they help you exclude unwanted traffic. For instance, if you sell luxury watches, you might want to add “cheap” as a negative keyword to prevent your ads from appearing in searches that are unlikely to convert.

How Negative Keywords Differ from Search Keywords

Unlike regular search keywords that you bid on to attract traffic, negative keywords exclude traffic based on terms that are not a good match for your product or service.

For example, if you sell a service in an industry where people are also online looking for careers to join your industry, you will probably want to add “career” as a negative keyword so you do not show up in job searchers.

This distinction is crucial because while search keywords aim to increase your visibility to the right audience, negative keywords protect you from wasteful spending on the wrong audience.

Negative Keyword Match Types and Levels

Just like regular keywords, negative keywords have match types that dictate how strictly traffic is filtered out.

Here are the types you can use:

Exact match: Blocks your ad from showing if the search query matches the negative keyword exactly.

Keyword Example: "free samples"

Use Case: If you run an e-commerce site that sells beauty products, you might use "free samples" as an exact match negative keyword. This is to ensure that your ads don't show up for searches specifically looking for free product samples, as your site only sells full-sized products. By setting "free samples" as an exact match negative keyword, your ads won’t appear if someone searches for "free samples" exactly, thus avoiding traffic from users who are not interested in purchasing.

Phrase match: Prevents your ad from appearing if the search contains the exact phrase in the negative keyword.

Keyword Example: "download software"

Use Case: Suppose you sell software licenses but do not offer any free software downloads. You could use "download software" as a phrase match negative keyword. This ensures that your ads won't show for any searches that include this exact phrase, such as "how to download software" or "best sites to download software." This helps focus your ad spend on users looking to purchase software rather than those looking for free downloads.

Broad match: Blocks queries that contain any word in your negative keyword phrase in any order.

Keyword Example: "cheap"

Use Case: Let's say you own a boutique furniture store specialising in high-end products. To attract the right clientele, you might add "cheap" as a broad-match negative keyword. This would prevent your ads from showing on any searches that include the word "cheap," such as "cheap furniture," "cheap sofas," or "durable cheap tables." This approach helps filter out users who are unlikely to be interested in premium furniture, optimising your advertising budget by targeting more qualified leads.

Levels at Which You Can Add Negative Keywords

Account Level: Negative keywords applied at this level will include all your campaigns, including Performance Max campaigns.

Campaign Level: Negative keywords at this level apply to all the ads within a specific campaign that you have selected.

Ad Group Level: These are more specific and only apply to a particular ad group within a campaign. For example, suppose you had a location-specific campaign, and each ad group covered an individual location within the location. In that case, you may want to add the names of those locations as negatives to prevent the other ads from showing.

Exclusion Lists: These are lists of negative keywords you can apply to multiple campaigns. They are a fantastic time saver but are underutilised in many of the campaigns I review.

A note about Performance Max campaigns: At present, the only way you can add negative keywords to this type of campaign is at the account level. When you add a negative keyword at this level, you may want to consider whether it is appropriate, as it will be applied to each campaign across the account.

Real-World Examples of Using Negative Keywords

Here’s how you might practically apply negative keywords at each level:

Campaign Level Example: For a campaign selling high-end electronics, you might add “cheap,” “free,” and “discount” as negative keywords to ensure you’re attracting a premium audience.

Ad Group Level Example: If you have an ad group specifically for “wired headphones,” you might add “wireless” as a negative keyword if you're only selling non-Bluetooth products in this group.

Shared List Example: If you run several campaigns for different products but none that offer services, you could add terms like “repair,” “service,” and “hire” to a shared list and apply them across all relevant campaigns to prevent irrelevant queries.

I hope you can see that using negative keywords effectively can significantly reduce wasted ad spend and improve the relevance of your traffic. This can lead to better conversion rates and a healthier ROI on your campaigns. Start evaluating your campaigns today, identify potential negative keywords, and see how your performance improves. Or, why not contact me. My strategy is tailored to draw in the right audience and create quality leads.

Remember, in Google Ads, the best offence is sometimes a good defence!