Negative Keywords For Google Ads: The Complete Guide

By Corey Frankosky · Last Updated September 8, 2026

If you asked me for the single best way to optimize a Google Ads campaign, the answer is negative keywords. Not bid adjustments, not new ad copy. Negative keywords, because they stop you paying for searches that were never going to become a customer without cutting into the campaign and hurting the traffic that does convert. The part most people get wrong is that negative match types do not behave the way regular keyword match types do. They work far more literally, and if you do not know that, you will add a negative expecting it to block something and it will keep costing you money. Here is how they actually work, where to add them, and the weekly habit that keeps an account clean.

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1Why negatives are the best optimization lever

Here is the pattern that costs local businesses the most money, and it happens every day.

Somebody searches plumber cost. They are not hiring anybody. They want a number so they can decide whether this is a today problem or a next month problem. They click your ad, do not find a clean answer, leave, and go back to Google.

Then, sometimes days later, they search plumber near me or best plumber in [city]. That is the search that books a job. That is the one you want to win.

The trouble is you may have already spent $15 on the first search. Which means you paid for the research phase and then have to pay again for the phase that actually converts.

Negative keywords are how you stop funding the first click and put the budget on the second one. And the reason they beat almost every other optimization is that they are subtractive. Lowering a bid or pausing a keyword affects the good traffic too. A well-chosen negative removes only the searches that were never going anywhere.

Question to Answer:

How much did you spend last month on searches from people who were researching rather than buying?

2Listen to the full episode

I go through real search terms from my own account, show exactly how each match type behaves, and build a negative keyword list live.

Surfside PPC Podcast Episode 30: Negative Keywords For Google Ads

Question to Answer:

When did you last open your search terms report?

3Negative match types work differently

This is the most important technical thing in this article. Negative keyword match types do not behave like regular keyword match types. They are far more literal, and they perform exactly how they sound.

Work through why that last row matters. Nobody searches the word "seniors" on its own. If you add it as an exact match negative expecting to block discount seekers, you will block nothing at all and keep paying for those clicks.

What you actually want there is seniors as a broad match negative, so any search containing that word anywhere gets excluded from your campaign.

Multi-word broad negatives are powerful. If you want to block a specific competitor or a course creator whose name keeps appearing in your search terms, add both words as a broad negative. Any search containing both words, in any order, with anything in between, gets excluded. So a two-word name blocks that name plus a product, that name plus a review, and any other combination.

Phrase negatives are your precision tool. "For beginners" as a phrase negative blocks every variation of that phrase without touching anything else. Use phrase when the word order carries the meaning.

The rule of thumb: broad for junk you never want, phrase for specific patterns, exact almost never.

Question to Answer:

Open your negative keyword list. Are any of them exact match when they should be broad?

4The four places to add negative keywords

You can add negatives at four levels, and knowing which to use for what saves a lot of duplicated work.

Negative keyword lists are how I manage this in every account. When I see a search term that I would never want to target anywhere in the account, it goes into a shared list rather than a single campaign. Create the list once, apply it to every campaign, and you maintain one thing instead of twelve.

Account level negatives are the newer option and worth using. Go to Admin, then Account settings, and you can add up to 1,000 negative keywords that exclude across Search, Shopping, and Performance Max at once. This is the right home for the terms that are universally worthless to your business.

Question to Answer:

Does every campaign in your account have your negative keyword list attached, including the newest one?

5Build a starter list before you launch

Do not wait for the search terms report to tell you things you already know. Some searches are never going to convert for anybody, and you can block them before you spend a dollar.

The universal starter list:

• Information seekers. How to, what is, why, guide, tutorial, examples, meaning, definition.
• DIY. DIY, do it yourself, yourself, homemade, at home.
• Free and cheap. Free, cheap, discount, coupon, budget. Only if you do not genuinely compete on price.
• Employment. Jobs, salary, careers, hiring, resume, apprenticeship, school, degree, certification, training, courses.
• Beginners and learners. For beginners, learn, course, class, training.
• Parts and self-service. Parts, used, second hand, rental, wholesale, supplier, manufacturer.
• Research platforms. Reddit, Quora, YouTube, forum, review, reviews.
• Calculators and tools. Calculator, estimator, template, checklist.

That last one is worth calling out. A search like metal roof cost calculator is somebody who wants a tool, not a roofer. On a roofing account those clicks can run $30, $40, $50 each. Block calculator as a broad negative before launch.

And if you think there is value in that traffic, the answer is not to buy the click. Build the calculator on your website and earn that visit organically.

Adapt the list to your business. Some of these are wrong for some advertisers, which is exactly what the next section is about.

Question to Answer:

Which of those categories would be actively wrong to block for your business?

6Write your do-not-block list first

This is the step almost nobody does, and it prevents the most damaging mistake in negative keyword management: blocking a word that appears in your best converting searches.

Before you add a single negative, write down the words that must never be blocked. For a tire shop that might be install, installation, replace, replacement, repair, service, mounting, balancing.

Here is why it matters. Say you are targeting tire installation near me on phrase match, and your search terms report fills up with tire brands, tire stores, and competing shops. The instinct is to start blocking words like tire and store aggressively.

But block the wrong one and you take out "tire installation near me," which is the exact search you built the campaign around. A broad match negative on a single common word can wipe out your best traffic silently, and you will not notice until impressions drop and you spend a week trying to work out why.

Keep the do-not-block list somewhere you can see it while you work the search terms report. When a negative you are about to add contains one of those words, use phrase match instead of broad, or find a different word in the query to block.

Question to Answer:

What are the five words that appear in every one of your converting search terms?

7The search types worth blocking

Beyond the obvious junk, there are four categories that need a judgment call rather than a rule.

Cost and price searches. These are genuinely mixed. Somebody searching "plumber cost" is usually researching, and often decides not to hire anyone at all once they see a number. But somebody searching "AC replacement cost [city]" may be seriously shopping. My default is to block generic cost queries and keep the ones with local or specific service intent, then check the data.

The better play is often to build the content instead. Publish a page covering average costs for the different jobs you do. You capture that search organically and it costs you nothing per visit.

Discount and special seekers. Searches like "tree removal for seniors" or "military discount" tell you the person is looking for a deal before they are looking for a company.

This is a real business decision, not an obvious block. If you offer those discounts, that traffic may convert fine. I looked at a local tree service running exactly these terms, and their clicks are cheap enough and their reviews strong enough that it is a small monthly investment that probably pays. But plenty of companies would rather put every dollar toward the large jobs and let discount seekers find them another way. If that is you, block the terms and build a page for those offers instead.

Competitor names. Ads on competitor searches are common. In one local HVAC search I ran, two different companies were bidding on a large competitor's brand name. Whether you want that traffic depends on your close rate and how much you are willing to pay for a comparison shopper.

What is not a judgment call is the other direction: if a completely unrelated business or a course creator's name keeps showing up in your search terms, block it as a broad negative immediately.

Searches with no intent at all. These are the easiest and they are everywhere. In my own account I found the single word ad pulling four clicks at 19 cents each. There is no intent behind a search like that. It is not a lead, it is not research, it is nothing. Block it.

Question to Answer:

Do you offer a discount that would make discount searches worth keeping, or should they be blocked?

8Mine your search terms report weekly

Everything above is setup. This is the habit that keeps the account clean, and it is not a one-time task.

Go to your campaign, click Insights and reports, then Search terms. Every negative keyword you will ever need is in there.

How to work it:

1. Sort by cost, highest first. The expensive irrelevant searches are doing the most damage. Fix those before you worry about a 19-cent click.
2. Scan for terms that are simply not your service. Add them as negatives at the right level and the right match type.
3. Look for the ones that are close but not right. This is where the real money is, and it is covered below.
4. Promote the winners. A search term that converted should become its own keyword, not just survive the cull.

The close-but-not-right problem is the subtle one. Let me use my own account as the example, because it is a good illustration of traffic that looks fine and is not.

I run campaigns targeting dentists, med spas, plumbers, roofers, and HVAC companies. My search terms report fills up with things like dental digital marketing agency, dental marketing company USA, and dental marketing firm. Those are not junk. Those are real businesses looking for real help.

But what I actually sell is Google Ads management. The searches I want are Google Ads agency for dentists, pay-per-click agencies for dentists, and PPC agency for med spas. When somebody searches "dental marketing agency" they might want a website, social media, SEO, Google Ads, or Meta Ads. I can do several of those, but I am paying a full-price click for somebody who may want something else entirely.

That is the distinction to look for in your own report. Not just "is this relevant" but "is this the specific thing I sell."

Question to Answer:

In your search terms report, which terms are adjacent to your service rather than actually your service?

9What Performance Max does to your search terms

Worth its own section, because if you run Performance Max your negative keyword work gets considerably more important.

Performance Max gives you far less control over matching, which means a much higher chance of junk landing in your search terms report.

I saw this clearly in my own account. I ran a Performance Max campaign aimed at Google Ads management and consulting, which are expensive clicks in a competitive space. The searches that came back were all over the place. Single-word queries like ads and Google. Navigational searches like my ad center and Skillshop, which are people trying to reach Google's own products.

One asset group was built around tree service marketing, meaning I wanted to reach tree service companies who need advertising help. What it delivered was tree removal for seniors at 16 clicks. The clicks were only 52 cents each so the damage was small, but those are homeowners looking for a discount on tree work, not tree companies looking for a marketing agency. Completely wrong audience, generated from a campaign asking for the opposite.

Two takeaways. First, account level negatives now apply to Performance Max, so use them. Second, if you are running PMax, check the search terms report more often, not less. The looser matching means it accumulates waste faster than a well-structured Search campaign does.

Question to Answer:

If you run Performance Max, when did you last review what searches it actually matched to?

10Using AI to speed this up

Two places where AI genuinely saves time on this.

Building the starter list. Before launching, ask for 50 negative keywords for your specific business type. Give it your service, your location, and what you do not do. You will get the obvious categories immediately, and you can review and cut rather than starting from a blank page.

Mining historical search terms. This is the bigger win. Export your search terms report and hand it over with a clear instruction: find the searches wasting budget, group them by theme, and suggest which words to block and at which match type.

On an account with real history you can pull out a large account-level negative list very quickly this way, and grouping by theme is the part that saves the most time. Two hundred wasted search terms usually collapse into six or seven patterns.

Review everything before you apply it. AI does not know which words appear in your best converting searches, which is exactly why section 6 exists. Check every suggestion against your do-not-block list, and pay particular attention to any single common word proposed as a broad negative.

Question to Answer:

Have you exported your full search terms history and looked at it as a whole, rather than a week at a time?