How to keep a Google Ads negative keyword list

A negative keyword is a query you refuse to pay for in Google Ads. You write, up front, the searches where your ad should not show. Without that list, broad match will buy clicks for jobs, free instructions, second-hand goods and services you do not sell. The account looks busy. The visitor does not leave a quote. Negatives are not a way to shrink the budget. They are a way to leave the budget on queries that have intent.

The list is not finished on setup day. People search in new shapes every week. At Yuz Medya the search terms report is a weekly reading. A query that fits becomes a keyword in the ad group. A query that does not fit becomes a negative. A row you are unsure about, with little spend, waits until the next week. Forcing a verdict on every row the same day creates bad negatives from thin data.

Where the list lives

The same word does not do the same job in every campaign. A shared list at account level holds queries you never want: careers, internships, free courses, PDF downloads, second-hand, or retail if you only sell wholesale. Campaign level holds what that campaign does not sell. Ad group level separates close intents. Negating “home moving” inside an “office relocation” group stops two services from blurring. Melting all of this into one giant list makes it impossible to see which layer blocked what.

The shared account list

A shared list gathers topics the brand does not sell, in one place. When a new campaign opens, the list is attached and the same mistakes are not rewritten. It is still not a blind copy. Hundreds of words downloaded from another trade can cut a service you do sell. Negating “maintenance” cuts demand for a firm that sells maintenance. The shared list starts short and grows as search terms are read.

Campaign and ad group

A brand campaign and a generic campaign should not eat each other’s queries. Negating the brand name on the generic side keeps the report clean. Negating generic terms inside the brand campaign stops brand search from spilling through broad match. At ad group level the negative follows the page. If the page is about industrial kitchens, a domestic query does not belong in that group. Read this with the landing page. We cover that fit in aligning the landing page with Google Ads.

How to read the search terms report

Think of the report as three columns: useful, useless, and not yet clear. Useful is a query that describes your service and leaves a conversion. It earns a place as a keyword, and the ad should say that promise. Useless is intent you do not sell: price-shopping for free, jobs, do-it-yourself, or the wrong city. Match type matters here. A broad negative cuts a family of queries. A phrase negative cuts that sequence. The wrong match type also removes a neighbour you wanted.

The unclear row has little volume. Negating it on day one closes learning. A little spend can accumulate. If it stays irrelevant for a few weeks, it joins the list. A verdict from a single click tightens the account for no reason. This reading belongs to the weekly optimisation inside Google Ads. Changing bid strategy before the report is read teaches the automation a dirty query.

What to write at the start, and what not to

If the brief names work you do not sell, the list opens that day. A province outside your service area, “free” when you do not offer a free survey, “used” when you only sell new: those are examples. Negating competitor names is not automatically right. Sometimes it is a deliberate choice. Often the click is expensive and the conversion is weak. The decision is not added in silence. It sits on the same line as “what we refuse” in the plan. We put that line in the brief in a digital marketing plan for a service business.

• Always out: job ads, internships, training PDFs, cities you do not serve.
• Campaign-specific: a product or service this page does not describe.
• Match type: are you cutting a family, or one sequence.
• A check: does the new negative also cut a word you sell.

The common mistake is pasting a huge list without reading it. The second is never opening negatives at all. The third is negating a query that converts because it “is not cheap”. An expensive query that leaves work is worth more than a cheap empty click. The list is not a cost-cutting tool. It is a filter for intent.

Frequently asked questions

How often should the list be reviewed?

If spend is steady, once a week on search terms is enough. In the first days of a new campaign, look more often, because broad match brings surprises. An account reviewed monthly collects irrelevant clicks in the weeks between. The rhythm is housekeeping, not panic.

Does broad match work without negatives?

It can run. Without a list, the budget scatters. Broad match is useful for finding close queries. The negative keyword is the edge of that closeness. Treating broad match as “smart” with no edge treats irrelevant searches as smart too. The two belong together.

Should you use a ready-made negative list?

Read it for ideas. Do not paste it as a file. A normal word in your trade is waste in another. Your own search terms are a better source than a download. The shared list should grow from that source.