What are Negative Keywords? How to Use Them + Free Starter List

Negative keywords are words or phrases you exclude, or block, from your PPC campaigns. This prevents your ads from showing up for irrelevant or low-intent searches. The result? More targeted ads and higher ROI.

Negative keywords allow your paid search campaigns to more sharply target leads who are ready to convert — and avoid those who aren’t.

In fact, we’ve seen upwards of 90% in wasted ad spend when clients don’t include any negative keywords in their accounts.

However, properly building a negative keyword list requires some heavy research upfront and ongoing management.

HawkSEM CEO Sam Yadegar guides us through the best practices you need to know to make your negative keywords have the biggest impact.

What are negative keywords?

Negative keywords are irrelevant or unwanted search terms that are flagged and excluded from triggering your ads.

This means if someone searches for a phrase including a term you’ve deemed a negative keyword, your ads won’t show up.

Negative keywords act as a filter to ensure your ads are only seen by a relevant audience and prevent you from wasting your budget on clicks that won’t convert.

Negative keywords vs. positive keywords

Standard keyword (or positive keyword) targeting helps ensure your paid search ad is tailored to your audience.

When you pay for each individual click, you want as many clicks as possible to be from qualified leads.

Negative keywords work the same way, just in the opposite direction.

When you add negative keywords, ad platforms (such as Google or Microsoft Advertising) know that you don’t want your ad to appear for searches containing those words.

Pro tip: Negative keywords only apply to the first 16 words in a search query. So, when it comes to especially long queries, negative keywords after the 16th word won’t trigger the filter, and your ad may still appear.

How negative keywords work

Picture this: You’re running a PPC campaign for a luxury hotel with a high-end target audience.

Now, you might want to bid on the keyword “hotel.” But you aren’t trying to target everyone looking for a hotel, you want to reach a specific audience – those looking for luxury.

In this case, you would want to exclude searches related to budget or cheap accommodation.

You can add terms like “cheap” or “budget” to your negative keyword list. By doing so, when someone searches for “cheap hotel” or “budget accommodation,” your ads won’t be triggered.

This helps ensure that your ads are only shown to users who are more likely to be interested in your upscale hotel offerings.

Negative keywords act like your campaign’s bouncer, keeping out the irrelevant searches and focusing on the audience that aligns with your business goals.

Different types of negative keywords

For Google Ads campaigns, as well as Amazon and Microsoft Advertising, negative keywords can be categorized as one of the following keyword match types:

• Negative broad match keywords: Keywords that don’t have surrounding punctuation (there’s no negative broad match modifier match type)
• Negative exact match keywords: If the search contains the exact phrase you’ve specified, the ad won’t appear
• Negative phrase match keywords: Your ad won’t come up if the exact keyword terms, in that order, are searched

These may be terms you’re familiar with, as you have categorized your standard keywords into these types as well. But they don’t always function in all the same ways for negative and standard keywords.

For example, as of the past few years, we’ve seen that “exact match” doesn’t always mean exactly for standard keywords. It does, however, when it comes to negative ones.

Google explains that the main difference between these two types is that you need to include variations of these keywords if you want to exclude them.

These variants can include:

• Synonyms
• Singular or plural versions
• Misspellings
• Any other close variations

When you mine reports for keywords to exclude, it’s wise to also exclude their variations.

Pro tip: When you enter your keywords into Google Ads, you can add them at both the ad group and campaign level. For negative keywords, you generally want to apply them to the campaign level, not just the ad group level, so other keywords can exclude that term.

How to identify your negative keywords

It’s a good idea to conduct your negative keyword research before and during a campaign launch.

Yadegar shares his favorite strategy with us.

“The first step is to start with a large inventory of the most common negative keywords, and from there implement a good cadence in reviewing the Google search terms report daily to start,” he says. “This can help identify both positive and negative keywords.”

Here are eight strategies to help you identify negative keywords effectively:

Start with obvious choices

Jot down commonly known irrelevant keywords to exclude. This provides a good jumping off point to get the gears turning.

Use Keyword Planner for negative keyword research

Conduct thorough keyword research to understand the search terms and phrases that are triggering your ads. Look for any irrelevant or unrelated keywords that may be generating clicks but not leading to conversions.

Monitor search term reports

Regularly review your search term reports provided by PPC platforms like Google Ads. These reports show the actual terms that searchers entered into the search engine before clicking on your ads. Identify any search terms that are not aligned with your business offerings or target audience.

Analyze conversion data in Google Ads

Dive deep into your conversion data to identify keywords that are not driving meaningful results. If certain keywords consistently lead to low-quality leads or have a high bounce rate, consider adding them as negative keywords.

Consider your unique business context

Think about your specific industry, products, or services and brainstorm potential associations or terms that could be mistakenly associated with your business. For example, if you sell salsa, the sauce, you might want to add “salsa lessons” or “salsa classes” as negative keywords to avoid people clicking on your ad who are looking for a different product.

Competitor analysis

Keep an eye on your competitors and their advertising strategies. (You can use Google’s auction insights to compare performance.) Look for keywords or terms they might be bidding on that are irrelevant to your business. By excluding these keywords, you can differentiate your ads and avoid competing in unrelated searches.

Leverage customer feedback and insights

Engage with your customers, conduct surveys, and gather feedback to understand their search intent and the keywords they associate with your business. This can help you identify any potential negative keywords that might be misleading or unrelated.

Continuously update your list

Continue to expand your negative keyword list based on your campaign performance. Make a recurring reminder to go into your ads account and head to “search terms” in your Keywords tab to mark any keywords you see that stand out as irrelevant.

How to add your negative keyword list to Google Ads

Once you have your negative keyword list, you can add it to your Google Ads campaigns. Sign into your Google Ads account, then:

• Click the Campaigns icon
• Click Audiences, keywords, and content dropdown in the section menu.
• Search keywords
• Negative search keywords tab > click the (+) button
• Choose the Use negative keyword list option, then select the campaign where you want to apply a negative keyword list
• On the table, check the boxes of the negative keyword lists you want to use
• Save

The most popular negative keywords: Free list

If you’re still a bit lost on where to start on your negative keyword research, we’ll give you a head start.

“From our first-hand experience, these are the core negative keywords we use for most of our clients,” Yadegar explains.

When building out a list like this, it’s vital to find terms that are relevant to the topic but not to what you’re advertising.

For instance, if you build decks, you probably want to add “YouTube” and “DIY” as negatives because you don’t want to reach people who want to learn how to do it themselves.

Discount shoppers and bargain hunters:

• bargain
• bargains
• bulk
• charity
• cheap
• cheapest
• clearance
• close out
• close outs
• code
• coupon
• coupons
• counterfeit
• deals
• discount
• fake
• inexpensive

Ecommerce competitors:

• alibaba
• amazon
• bed bath beyond
• bonanza
• costco
• craigslist
• cvs
• ebay
• etsy
• dell
• dicks
• dillards
• hayneedle
• home depot
• ikea
• kijiji

Job seekers:

• career
• careers
• CV
• contractors
• employment
• freelancers
• freelance
• hiring
• independent contractors
• intern
• interns
• internship
• internships
• job
• jobs
• positions
• recruiter
• recruiting
• resume
• resumes
• salaries
• salary

Support searches:

• chargeback
• complaint
• customer
• email
• emails
• fraud
• guarantee
• guarantees
• help
• manual
• manuals
• negative
• phone
• recall
• recalls

Repair terms:

• apart
• broke
• broken
• burn
• burned
• burnt
• care
• caring
• condition
• crack
• cracked
• cracking
• cut
• deform
• deformed
• discolor

Legal searches:

• act
• act of
• compliance
• law
• laws
• legal
• legislation
• regulation
• regulations
• tax
• taxes

Pro tip: To really see the impact that negative keywords are having on your PPC campaigns, you can use a tool like HawkSEM’s ConversionIQ. Our proprietary tool gives you actionable data on your PPC campaigns and can help you connect the dots between which keywords actually lead to new business and which to avoid.

Tips to manage negative keywords

Just like your standard keyword list, your negative list should never stagnate.

“This is not a task that is ever ‘completed,’ it is always ongoing — especially considering that 15% of all daily searches are brand new,” says Yadegar.

To manage negative keyword lists inside Google Ads, users can easily add a new column to view, filter, and edit negative keyword lists applied to campaigns. But there are other tools and techniques you can use to ensure your negative keyword lists are properly managed.

Tools and automation

Aside from Google’s free resources, Yadegar recommends three tools to help manage your negative keywords:

1. Sitechecker
2. Negative Keyword Finder
3. Karooya

Monitoring performance

Managing your negative keywords effectively means analyzing your campaign’s performance overall.

Yadegar explains that “to track the impact of negative keywords on your campaign success, you should see the cost per conversion begin to decrease without a drop in overall conversion volume.”

Pro tip: When it comes to symbols, Google allows for ampersands (&), accent marks (á), and asterisks (*) in your negative keywords. As such, keywords with and without these symbols will be considered two different negative keywords — think of Beyonce as a different keyword than Beyoncé or “black & white” vs. “black and white.”

Common mistakes to avoid

We’ve seen our fair share of negative keyword mishaps behind the scenes. Here are the most common:

Over-excluding 

“You need to find the right balance so you’re not over negating and blocking potential queries that can convert, but you also want to remain diligent and fend off any potential irrelevant searches,” Yadegar says.

In other words? Be cautious of limiting reach with an overly aggressive list of negative keywords.

Neglecting match types

Different match types control how strictly your negative keywords filter searches. So not using the correct match type can result in blocking more searches than you intended.

Letting your list stagnate

“It’s important to remember that negative keywords are never final and require ongoing maintenance and optimization as user behavior changes,” says Yadegar.

Regularly adding new negative keywords will ensure relevant ads always show and wasted ad spend is at a minimum.

The benefits of negative keywords

You’ve seen how negative keywords could impact your search campaigns for the better. But let’s take a look at some of the measurable results you can see from implementing a negative keyword strategy.

• Improved relevance: Fine-tune your targeting and ensure your ads are displayed to a highly relevant audience. This helps avoid wasting ad spend on clicks from users searching for unrelated or irrelevant terms.
• Cost savings: Optimize your budget by preventing your ads from appearing in searches that are unlikely to result in conversions. Exclude irrelevant queries and reduce the number of clicks that are not aligned with your business goals.
• Increased click-through rate (CTR): Improved relevancy can lead to higher click-through rates as users are more likely to find your ads directly related to their search intent. A higher CTR not only drives more traffic to your website but can also positively impact your Quality Score, potentially reducing your cost per click.
• Conversion rate increase: Attract a more targeted audience that aligns with your specific offerings.  As a result, your conversion rates may improve as you capture the attention of users who are more likely to take the desired action, such as making a purchase or filling out a lead form.
• Refined messaging: The use of negative keywords allows you to gain insights into the search terms and queries that are not relevant to your business. This information can help you refine your targeting and messaging strategies, ensuring that you are reaching the right audience with the right message. By understanding what doesn’t work, you can optimize your campaigns, test different approaches, and make data-driven decisions to continually improve your ad performance.

The takeaway

Effectively managing your negative keyword list is critical to building targeted PPC campaigns.

While you don’t want to overdo it on the keyword exclusions, with a bit of brainstorming and some campaign tweaks, you can be sure that your PPC campaign won’t attract the wrong crowd.

Looking for a little help along the way? We’ve got you.

This article has been updated and was originally published in January 2021.