Negative keyword

Negatives are how an account says no. Every keyword, especially broad match, catches some searches that are wrong for the business, and negatives stop paying for them.

They work differently from keywords: no close variants, so plurals and synonyms need their own entries, and a negative that is too wide can switch off keywords you chose.

1. Open Campaigns, then Audiences, keywords and content, then Negative search keywords.
2. Add negatives at ad group or campaign level, or in shared lists under Tools, then Shared library.
3. Add them straight from the search terms report with the Add as negative keyword option.
4. Choose the match type: broad, phrase or exact.

A wedding venue adds jobs, cheap and free as phrase negatives, and the exact negative [wedding venue jobs]. It also adds venues for hire for free, after seeing it in the search terms report.

• Forgetting plurals and synonyms.
• Adding a broad negative that blocks your own keywords.
• Adding negatives based on one bad click instead of a pattern.

The audit checks Oppy runs on this, each with its own page.

• Searches taking money with nothing back
• Negatives that let their plural through
• A negative keyword switching off one you chose

• Negative keyword list: A shared list of negative keywords you can attach to several campaigns at once, up to 20 lists per account.
• Search term: What someone actually typed when your ad showed.
• Close variants: Searches Google treats as the same as a keyword: plurals, misspellings, abbreviations and same-meaning phrasings.
• Wasted spend: Money spent on clicks that bring no result past the point where zero is likely to be chance.