How to Add Negative Keywords in Google Ads

Short version: Adding a negative keyword takes about thirty seconds. Choosing the right match type and the right level takes judgement, and getting either wrong either leaves the waste running or blocks searches you were making money from. Work from the search terms report, add negatives at the level that matches how broadly the term applies, and check what you blocked a week later.

Negative keywords are the cheapest optimisation in Google Ads. Every irrelevant search you exclude is budget that moves to a search that can convert. On most accounts we audit, the first negative keyword pass frees somewhere between five and fifteen percent of spend without touching a single bid.

How to add negative keywords: the steps

Start where the evidence is, which is the search terms report, not your imagination:

1. Open the search terms report. In Google Ads, go to Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Set the date range to the last 30 to 90 days so you have enough volume to judge.
2. Filter to terms with cost. Add a filter for clicks greater than zero, then sort by cost descending. A term that has spent money and never converted is the one worth your attention.
3. Tick the terms you want to exclude using the checkboxes on the left.
4. Click "Add as negative keyword" above the table.
5. Choose the level: ad group, campaign, or a negative keyword list. This is the decision that matters most, and it is covered below.
6. Choose the match type, then save.

To add negatives directly without going through the search terms report, go to the campaign, open Audiences, keywords and content, then Search keywords, and select the Negative keywords tab. That is the right path when you already know what you want to block, such as a competitor name or a category you do not sell.

Negative keyword match types work differently

This is where most of the damage happens, because negative match types do not behave like positive ones. The critical difference: negative keywords do not match close variants. A negative for "shoe" will not block "shoes". Plurals, misspellings, and singular forms all need to be added separately.

• Negative broad match (typed plainly, no punctuation). Blocks any search containing all of those words in any order. A negative broad of free shipping blocks "free shipping shoes" and "shoes with free shipping" but not "free delivery". This is the workhorse.
• Negative phrase match (in quotation marks). Blocks searches containing that exact sequence of words, with anything before or after. "running shoes" blocks "cheap running shoes" but not "shoes for running".
• Negative exact match (in square brackets). Blocks only that precise search and nothing else. [running shoes] blocks exactly that term while "best running shoes" still serves.

The practical rule: use negative exact when you are excluding one specific search that failed, and negative phrase or broad when you are excluding an entire concept, such as "free", "jobs", "diy", or "how to make".

Ad group, campaign, or list: where to add them

Level determines blast radius, and this is where accounts get quietly damaged:

• Ad group level. Use when the term is wrong for this ad group but fine elsewhere. Classic case: adding "kids" as a negative in your adult footwear ad group while a separate kids ad group still targets it. Also how you stop your own ad groups competing for the same search.
• Campaign level. Use when the term is wrong for this campaign but might be right in another. A term that suits your prospecting campaign but not your brand campaign belongs here.
• Negative keyword lists. Use for terms that are wrong everywhere and always. Build one master list of universal junk, then apply it to every campaign. Update it once and every campaign inherits the change, which is why it beats adding the same negative in fifteen places.

To build a list, go to Tools, then Shared library, then Negative keyword lists. Create it once, apply it to all campaigns, and add to it as you find new junk. On a mature account this list should be the first thing you set up and the last thing you neglect.

The negatives almost every account needs

Some categories waste money on nearly every account. Worth checking your search terms for all of these:

• Free intent. "free", "cheap", "discount code", "coupon". People looking for free are not looking to pay you, though be careful if you genuinely run offers.
• Job seekers. "jobs", "career", "salary", "hiring", "vacancy". They will never buy and they click a lot.
• Research and education. "what is", "how to make", "diy", "tutorial", "meaning", "wikipedia". Informational intent on a commercial campaign burns budget.
• Wrong audience. "wholesale" if you sell retail, "second hand" and "used" if you sell new, "rental" if you sell outright.
• Competitor names, unless you are deliberately running a competitor conquesting campaign with its own budget and expectations.
• Products you do not stock. The single biggest e-commerce leak. If your feed has no size 13 and no vegan range, those searches are pure waste.

Four mistakes worth avoiding

• Blocking too broadly. Adding free as a negative broad match blocks "free shipping", which is often exactly the buyer you want. Check what a broad negative would have blocked before you add it.
• Forgetting plurals and misspellings. Because negative keywords ignore close variants, you need both "shoe" and "shoes". Scan for the common misspellings too.
• Conflicting with your own keywords. A negative that overlaps an active keyword silently switches that keyword off. Google flags some conflicts under Recommendations, but not all of them.
• Adding negatives once and never again. Search terms drift constantly, especially on broad match and Performance Max. A monthly pass on any account spending meaningfully is the minimum.

Negative keywords in Performance Max

Performance Max historically gave almost no negative keyword control, which is why so much waste hid inside it. Account-level negative keyword lists can now be applied to Performance Max campaigns, and campaign-level negatives are available too. This is the first place to look if a PMax campaign is spending well and converting badly, because brand and irrelevant traffic mixing into the same campaign is a common cause. Our piece on what Performance Max really does with your budget covers the wider picture.

Check what you blocked

A week after any significant negative keyword pass, go back and confirm you cut waste rather than volume. Compare impressions, clicks, and conversions for the affected campaigns against the prior period. A drop in cost with conversions holding steady means it worked. A drop in conversions alongside the cost means a negative went too wide, and the fix is to find it and either narrow the match type or remove it.

That verification step is the one most people skip, and it is the difference between negative keywords being an optimisation and being a slow leak in the other direction.

Match types for negative keywords, and why they behave differently

Negative match types do not work the way positive match types do, and this is the single most common source of confusion. A negative broad match keyword blocks a search only if the search contains every word in your negative, in any order. It does not expand to synonyms, misspellings or close variants the way positive broad match does. If you add "cheap" as a negative broad, you block "cheap running shoes" but you do not block "cheapest running shoes".

Negative phrase blocks searches containing your exact phrase in that order, with words allowed either side. Negative exact blocks only the precise search, nothing more. The practical consequence is that negative broad is the workhorse for junk concepts, negative phrase is for multi-word ideas you want blocked as a unit, and negative exact is the scalpel for a single search you want gone without collateral damage.

The plural trap deserves its own warning. Because negatives do not match close variants, "shoe" as a negative does not block "shoes". If you want both gone you add both. This is the opposite of how positive keywords behave and it catches experienced managers out regularly.

Account, campaign or ad group: choosing the level

The level you apply a negative at should match how broadly the exclusion is true. A term that is wrong for your entire business belongs in an account level negative list. A term that is wrong for one campaign but fine elsewhere belongs at campaign level. A term that separates two ad groups from each other belongs at ad group level.

Most accounts get this wrong in one specific way: they add everything at ad group level because that is where they happened to be looking when they found the term. Six months later the same junk term has been added forty times in forty ad groups, and nobody can tell which exclusions are deliberate. Build shared lists early and apply them at account level, and reserve ad group negatives for genuine intent separation.

Intent separation is worth explaining because it is the one legitimate use of ad group negatives. If you have one ad group for "running shoes" and another for "trail running shoes", the broader ad group needs "trail" as a negative so the specific ad group can win those searches with its more relevant ad. This is sculpting, not exclusion, and it is the only case where adding a negative to a term you actively want is correct.

The negatives almost every e-commerce account needs

Some exclusions are close to universal for online retail. Free, cheap, DIY, how to make, wholesale, bulk, used, second hand, repair, refurbished, and the whole family of job seeking terms: jobs, salary, career, vacancy, hiring. None of these searches belong to someone about to buy your product at full price.

Then there is the review and comparison cluster, which is more nuanced. Terms like "review", "vs" and "best" attract researchers rather than buyers, but for higher considered purchases those researchers convert later. Blocking them outright can cut off genuine demand. Look at the assisted conversion data before you exclude them, and if the account is running a healthy remarketing setup they often pay for themselves.

Competitor names are the other judgement call. Bidding on competitor terms is legal and sometimes profitable, but it is expensive and the conversion rates are usually poor for e-commerce. If you are not deliberately running a competitor conquest campaign, add the major competitor names as negatives and check what it does to your cost per conversion over the following month.

Shopping and Performance Max: different rules

Standard Shopping campaigns accept negative keywords normally, and they matter more there than in Search because you cannot choose positive keywords at all. The search terms report is your only steering wheel, and negatives are the only way to turn it.

Performance Max is the harder case. For a long time PMax accepted only account level negative keyword lists, applied through support or the account settings, which made granular exclusion impossible. Campaign level negative keywords are now available in PMax, and if you are running e-commerce through PMax you should be using them. The practical approach is a well maintained account level list for universal junk, plus campaign level negatives for the terms specific to that campaign's product set. We go deeper on this in our guide to choosing between PMax, Shopping and Demand Gen.

One caveat that applies to both: excluding too aggressively in Shopping or PMax starves the algorithm of the signal it needs. These campaign types learn from volume. A brutal negative pass on a campaign still in its learning phase can stall it entirely. Add the obvious waste, then wait.

How often to run a negative keyword pass

Monthly is right for most accounts. Weekly is right for accounts spending heavily or running new campaigns where search terms are still settling. Quarterly is too slow for anything but a very stable account with mature campaigns and tight match types.

The pass itself should take twenty minutes once you have the habit. Open the search terms report for the period since your last pass, filter to clicks greater than zero with no conversions, sort by cost descending, and work down until the terms stop being obviously wrong. Anything you hesitate over, leave. The cost of blocking a converting term is higher than the cost of one more month of a marginal one.

A negative keyword pass is one of the seven areas covered in our Google Ads audit checklist, and it is usually where the fastest savings appear. For Shopping accounts specifically, the Google Shopping audit checklist covers the feed side.

Frequently asked questions

Do negative keywords lower my quality score?

No, not directly. Negative keywords do not carry a quality score of their own. Indirectly they usually help, because removing irrelevant impressions improves click through rate on the keywords that remain, and click through rate is a quality score input.

How many negative keywords is too many?

Google allows up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign and 5,000 per shared list, so the technical limit is rarely the problem. The practical limit is comprehension. If nobody can explain why a term was excluded, the list has become a liability. Document the reasoning for anything non obvious.

Can negative keywords block traffic I actually want?

Yes, and this is the main risk. The usual cause is a broad negative that contains a word appearing in legitimate searches. Adding "case" to block phone cases will also block "in case of" style searches and any product with case in the name. Check the search terms report a week after any significant negative pass to see what disappeared.

Should negative keywords go in a shared list or directly in the campaign?

Shared lists for anything true across multiple campaigns, which is most universal junk. Direct campaign negatives for exclusions specific to that campaign. Shared lists are easier to maintain and update in one place, which matters once an account has more than a handful of campaigns.

Do negative keywords work in Performance Max?

Yes. Account level negative keyword lists have worked in PMax for some time, and campaign level negative keywords are now supported as well. Both are worth using for e-commerce accounts, though avoid aggressive exclusion while a campaign is still learning.

Where to start

If you have never done a negative keyword pass, open the search terms report for the last 90 days, filter to clicks greater than zero and conversions equal to zero, and sort by cost. The top twenty rows will usually pay for the exercise several times over. Build a shared list from the universal junk, add the account-specific terms at the right level, then diarise a monthly repeat.

If you want someone to run that pass across your account and show you exactly what is being wasted, book a free audit call and we will send you the search terms that are costing you money.

About the author

This guide is written by Vasant Chaudhary, a Google Ads specialist with more than five years of experience managing over 50 e-commerce accounts across the US, UK, and India. He focuses on Google Shopping, Performance Max, and product feed management. Get in touch or start with a free audit call.