Negative Keywords: The List Your Account Is Missing

Here is a sentence I say on calls all the time: you are not just paying for the customers you want, you are paying for every search Google decided was close enough. Negative keywords are how you close that gap. They are the list of words that tell Google, never show my ad for this. And in most small business accounts I open, that list is nearly empty.

How junk searches eat your budget

Say you run a roofing company. Your keyword is roof repair. Without negatives, your ad can show for roof repair jobs, roof repair training, how to repair a roof yourself, and free roof repair programs. Every one of those clicks costs the same as a real customer. None of them will ever hire you. Multiply that by a month and it is real money, often a quarter or more of the whole budget.

How to read the Search terms report

This report shows the exact searches people typed before clicking your ad. It is the single most useful screen in the account. Here is the routine:

• Go to Insights and reports, then Search terms. Set the date range to the last 30 days.
• Sort by cost, highest first. The expensive junk floats to the top.
• Read each term out loud and ask, would this person ever hire me? If the answer is no, it is a negative.
• Select the term, add it as a negative keyword, and choose the match type (more on that below).
• Also look at terms with lots of impressions and no clicks. Those are tomorrow's wasted clicks.

Starter negative categories

Every account should start with these categories, adjusted to your trade:

• Jobs and careers: jobs, hiring, careers, salary, employment, internship, resume
• Free: free, no cost, grant, charity, pro bono
• DIY: diy, how to, tutorial, youtube, course, training, certification, school
• Cheap: cheap, cheapest, discount, coupon. Only add these if you are not competing on price.
• Wholesale and supplies: wholesale, supplier, parts, for sale, buy (when you sell a service, not products)
• Login and support: login, sign in, customer service number, phone number. People navigating, not buying.
• Unrelated services: the near-miss services you do not offer. A residential roofer adds commercial terms, and the other way around.

This is also one of the core fixes in my checklist on why your Google Ads are not working, because an account with no negatives is an account paying a junk tax every single day.

Exact vs broad negatives, in plain terms

For negative keywords, match type works a little differently than for regular keywords. A negative exact match blocks only that precise search. A negative broad match blocks any search that contains all the words in your negative, in any order. So a broad negative on "jobs" blocks "roofing jobs near me" and "jobs in roofing" both. Broad negatives are powerful and a little dangerous, so use them for clear junk like jobs and free, and exact negatives for specific odd terms you only want gone one at a time.

Use shared lists

Instead of adding the same negatives to every campaign, build one negative keyword list in the account's shared library and attach it to all your campaigns. Then every new campaign you create inherits the protection, and when you find a new junk term, you add it once and it applies everywhere. Accounts I set up this way stay clean with almost no effort.

The weekly ten-minute routine

Negative keywords are not a one-time fix, because searchers keep inventing new ways to find you by accident. The habit that works: once a week, ten minutes, open the Search terms report for the last seven days, sort by cost, and add the junk. Pair it with a settings check once a month, like the ones in the settings that quietly waste your budget, and your account stays honest.

If you want help building your first real list, that is a perfect job for a live session. My Google Ads help starts at $99 for the first hour, and there is a free 15-minute Marketing Check if you want to start smaller.

On a screen share, we pull up your actual Search terms together, and you will see the junk with your own eyes before we block a single term. Most owners are surprised how much of their budget was going to searches that never had a chance of becoming a customer.