AdWords Help

You can prevent your ads from appearing on individual placements and categories of placements at the campaign level and at the ad group level. You can manage excluded placements manually (explained below) or exclude placements or categories using the Site and Category Exclusion Tool. 

Two things to note:

• Your ads will only appear on the Content Network if your campaign is opted in to the Content Network.
• Most exclusions apply only to the Content Network. However, if you exclude "parked domains," you'll exclude all parked domain sites on both the Content Network and the Search Network.
  

Manually managing excluded placements

1. Sign in to your AdWords account at http://adwords.google.com.
   
2. Click "Campaigns" in the top green navigation bar.
   
3. Navigate to a campaign or ad group.
   
4. Click on the "Networks" tab, and scroll down to the bottom of the page.
5. If the excluded placements tables aren't showing, open them by clicking "+" next to the "Excluded placements" section.
6. You'll see an "Ad group level" table and a "Campaign level" table. Each has four action buttons to choose from: Exclude placement, Edit, Delete, and Download. ("Edit" and "Delete" only become active buttons after you select one or more existing excluded placement to edit.)
7. Choose an action, and follow the steps that follow.
   

When you're adding excluded placements, you have several options for filtering websites. You may enter a domain, subdomain, or path name. You may not enter individual pages. The format of each entry on your site exclusion list determines how the AdWords system will filter sites.

- Acceptable formats

• Top-level domain name: example.com
• First-level subdomain: www.example.com
• First-level subdomain: unwanted.example.com
• Single directory name: www.example.com/widgets/
• Single directory name: example.com/widgets/

- Unacceptable formats

• Multiple directory names: www.example.com/widgets/redwidgets/
• Multi-level subdomain: www.unwanted.example.com
• Individual page: www.example.com/index.html

- Site Exclusion Scenarios

In general, entering domains will prevent your ads from appearing on any page on or within that domain. However, entering subdomains or paths will only prevent your ads from appearing on any page on or within that subdomain or path. A few examples are listed below

Exclusion: 'example.com'
Results: Your ads will not appear on 'example.com, www.example.com, www1.example.com, www.example.com/widgets, www.example.com/widgets/page.html,' or 'unwanted.example.com'.

Exclusion: 'www.example.com'
Results:

• Your ads will not appear on 'www.example.com' or 'www.example.com/widgets'.
• Your ads may appear on 'www1.example.com' or 'unwanted.example.com'.

Exclusion: 'www.example.com/widgets'
Results:

• Your ads will not appear on 'www.example.com/widgets' or 'www.example.com/widgets/page.html'.
• Your ads may appear on 'www.example.com'.