Google Ads Negative Keywords: The Setting Most New Advertisers Skip

Someone sets up a Google Ads campaign, picks a handful of keywords, and never touches the negative keyword list again. Google Ads negative keywords, in a definition that actually holds up: a negative keyword tells Google not to show your ad for a specific search, the exact opposite of a regular keyword, which tells Google when to show it.

Every keyword you bid on is written to catch a range of related searches, not just the exact phrase, especially on broad and phrase match. That range always includes some searches you never actually wanted: a plumber bidding on "boiler repair" also shows up for "how to repair a boiler myself"; a solicitor bidding on "family law" also shows up for "family law degree jobs". Negative keywords are how you tell the auction to stop entering those specific searches at all.

This is the part beginners misunderstand: negative keywords don't filter out bad clicks after they happen, they stop the auction from happening in the first place. Once someone clicks an irrelevant search result, that click is already paid for, whether or not they convert. A negative keyword prevents your ad from ever being eligible for that search, so the money was never at risk to begin with. This is why reviewing negative keywords regularly is one of the few PPC changes that reduces wasted spend without needing a bigger budget or a higher bid to see the benefit.

Negative broad match blocks any search containing all your negative terms, in any order, the widest net. Negative phrase match blocks searches containing your exact phrase in that exact order, allowing other words around it. Negative exact match blocks only that precise search term, the narrowest and most surgical option. Most accounts under-use exact and phrase negatives and over-rely on broad negatives, which can accidentally block searches you actually wanted; understanding which type you're adding matters as much as adding one at all.

The Search Terms report, inside every Google Ads campaign, shows the actual searches that triggered your ads, not the keywords you set. This is the single most important weekly task in account maintenance: scan it for searches with no genuine buying intent, no realistic path to converting, and add them as negatives before more budget goes to the same pattern. A generic list copied from a blog post is a reasonable starting point, but the search terms report is what tells you which negatives your specific account actually needs, which changes by industry and even by season.

Google Ads lets you build a shared negative keyword list once and apply it across every campaign in the account, rather than rebuilding the same obvious exclusions (job seekers, free-resource hunters, DIY searchers) inside each individual campaign. This matters for any account running more than one campaign: without a shared list, the same wasted-spend pattern has to be caught and fixed separately in every campaign, and it's easy for a new campaign to launch without inheriting the lessons already learned in an older one. Building the shared list first, then adding campaign-specific negatives on top, is the more maintainable structure for any account beyond a single campaign.

An illustrative scenario, not a specific client result: a business selling premium bathroom renovations bids on "bathroom renovation", a broad match keyword. Without negatives, that keyword also matches "cheap bathroom renovation", "DIY bathroom renovation ideas", and "bathroom renovation jobs", none of which describe a premium renovation client. Every one of those clicks is charged at the same rate as a genuine enquiry. Adding "cheap", "DIY", and "jobs" as negative keywords doesn't cost anything and doesn't reduce the budget available for genuine searches; it simply stops that budget being spent on searches that were never going to convert in the first place.

Beyond the obvious job-seeker and free-resource exclusions, most accounts should also consider whether they want to appear for competitor brand names and near-identical misspellings of their own brand. Bidding on a direct competitor's name is a deliberate strategic choice some businesses make on purpose, not an accident, so this isn't a blanket rule to always exclude competitors; it's a decision to make consciously rather than let broad match decide it for you by accident. The same applies to your own brand name: if a separate branded campaign already exists, excluding your own brand terms from a generic Search campaign prevents budget being spent twice on a search that would likely have converted for free via organic or the branded campaign anyway.

A perfect negative keyword list won't rescue a fundamentally broken landing page, a slow site, or a page that doesn't clearly ask for the action you want; it reduces wasted spend on the front end, it doesn't fix what happens after the click. It also won't fix a low Quality Score on its own, ad relevance and landing page experience matter independently. And it isn't a one-time setup task; new irrelevant search patterns show up continuously as the auction and seasonal search behaviour shift, which is why this needs to be a recurring review, not a launch-day checklist item.

It's also worth being honest about the ceiling: negative keywords reduce waste, they don't manufacture demand that doesn't exist. A campaign targeting a genuinely tiny, over-saturated market won't be fixed by an immaculate negative keyword list; at some point the constraint is the market itself, not the account's discipline, and no amount of exclusion list maintenance changes that underlying reality.

How many negative keywords should a new campaign start with?

A short, genuinely relevant starter list (10-20 terms like the ones above) is a reasonable launch-day baseline, but the real list is built from the search terms report over the first few weeks, not decided upfront in a vacuum.

Can adding too many negative keywords hurt a campaign?

Yes, particularly with negative broad match added carelessly; it's possible to accidentally block searches you genuinely wanted. Check the search terms report after adding negatives to confirm you haven't lost relevant traffic, not just before.

Should negative keywords be set at campaign level or account level?

Both have a place. Account-level negative lists suit terms that are never relevant to any campaign you run (job seekers, free-resource searchers); campaign-level negatives suit terms relevant to one campaign but genuinely wanted in another.

Should I always exclude competitor brand names as negatives?

Not necessarily; some businesses deliberately bid on competitor names as a strategy, which is a legitimate choice, not a mistake. The point isn't to blanket-exclude competitors, it's to decide consciously whether you want that spend, rather than have broad match include it by accident without anyone choosing it.

How often should the negative keyword list be reviewed?

Weekly for a new or actively managed account, at minimum monthly for a mature, stable one. Search behaviour shifts continuously; a list built once at launch and never revisited is a common, quietly expensive gap we see when auditing new accounts.

Do negative keywords work the same way on Performance Max campaigns?

Only partially; Performance Max historically offers far less negative keyword control than standard Search campaigns, which is one reason our guide to Google Ads campaign types recommends starting with Search rather than PMax for a new advertiser who needs that level of control.

Does adding negative keywords improve Quality Score?

Not directly, Quality Score is built from expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience, none of which negative keywords touch on their own. What negative keywords do improve is your actual click-through rate over time, by removing the irrelevant searches that were dragging it down, and a genuinely improved CTR does feed back into Quality Score indirectly, over weeks rather than immediately.

If you want your account's search terms report reviewed properly rather than guessed at, our Google Ads management team does exactly that. Or contact the Blackstone Media team to talk it through.