Build a Negative Keywords List From Your Own Search Terms

Open the search terms report for the last 30 to 90 days, sort by cost, and mark every term that could never produce a customer: job seekers, free or DIY intent, wrong locations, unrelated products, competitors you do not want to bid on. Add those as negatives, grouped into themed lists you can apply across campaigns. Then repeat on a schedule.

Generic “comprehensive” negative lists from the internet are a starting point at best. They block words that may be valuable for your business and miss the irrelevant terms specific to your market.

Google Ads supports negative broad, phrase and exact match. A negative broad keyword blocks searches containing all its words in any order; negative phrase blocks searches containing the words in that order; negative exact blocks only that exact search. Google’s documentation notes that negatives do not automatically cover close variants such as plurals and misspellings.

That last point catches many accounts. If “free” is a negative, “freebie” is not blocked; if “job” is a negative, “jobs” may still trigger ads. Add the variants you see in the report.

Most service accounts end up with a few recurring themes: employment and careers, education and courses, DIY and how-to, free and cheap when you do not compete on price, locations you do not serve, and services you do not offer. Build each theme as a shared list so a new campaign inherits it on day one.

Be careful with ambiguous words. “Cheap” may be irrelevant for a premium provider and valuable for a volume one; “how to” may be DIY intent or a buyer researching before hiring. Check the terms that actually converted before blocking a word.

Review your negatives quarterly against converted search terms. Google Ads can warn when a negative conflicts with a positive keyword, but it will not tell you about valuable searches you never saw because a negative blocked them.

With broad match and automated campaign types, search term visibility can be limited, so combine the search terms report with conversion data from your CRM. A term that looks irrelevant may belong to a customer; a term that converts to form fills may never become revenue.