Negative keywords are a core component of a successful keyword list. A well-targeted keyword list can help lower advertising costs and ensure targeted visits to your website.
It's important to remember that over-using negative keywords can result in a very limited advertising audience. However, not using negative keywords can mean that your ads show to users who aren't interested in your business or service. This untargeted traffic can lower your keywords' Quality Scores and hurt your return on investment. Consider all your potential keywords carefully, including negative keywords, before you add them to your account.
Watch the 'Negative Keywords' video to learn about choosing the right negative keywords and why they're important to your AdWords account.
Here's how to find negative keyword ideas:
Keyword Tool
Here's how to use the Keyword Tool to generate potential negative keywords:
- Sign in to your AdWords account at https://adwords.google.com.
- Click the campaign and the ad group that you'd like to edit.
- Select the Keywords tab.
- Click Keyword tool.
- Enter a generic term related to your product or business (generally a one-word term) in the available field.
- Click Get Keyword Ideas.
- Check the Keyword column for any search queries that are irrelevant to your product or business and that you wouldn't want triggering your ads.
- Click the downward-pointing arrow in the Match Type column for each keyword that you want to add as a negative match. Select Negative, and the term will be added to your list as negative keyword.
- Click Save to Ad Group when you're done.
Use the "Search terms" report
Run a "Search terms" report to see all the search queries that have triggered your ads. If you see any irrelevant terms, write them down and manually add them as negative keywords to your ad group or campaign.
Manually add negative keywords
You can manually add negative keywords to your keyword lists at both the ad group and campaign level. First, think of search queries that you don't want triggering your ads. Then specify the irrelevant terms as negative keywords by placing a negative sign (–) before the word. Here's an example keyword list with three negative keywords:
Used books
French used books
–rare
–text
–school
Negative keywords and the Content Network
Note that negative keywords also affect where your keyword-targeted ads appear in the Content Network. The AdWords system will factor in the negative keywords you applied to your campaign or ad group and avoid showing your ads on sites containing those terms. Learn more
