Negative keywords: stop paying for the wrong searches

Every Google Ads account has a leak. You set up your campaign, pick your keywords, write decent ad copy, and wait. Clicks come in. But when you look closely at what people actually typed before clicking, half the searches have nothing to do with what you sell. That gap between the keyword you chose and the query someone typed is where negative keywords do their work.

A negative keyword tells Google which searches to skip. Add "free" as a negative, and your ad stops showing when someone types "free visa consultation." Add "salary" and your staffing firm stops paying for people researching pay scales instead of looking for a recruiter. The concept is simple. The discipline of maintaining a proper negative list is where most small accounts fall short.

Why the default list is never enough

Most advertisers add a handful of negatives at launch and move on. The problem is that Google's broad and phrase match types interpret your keywords more loosely than you expect. A travel desk bidding on "flight booking help" might show up for "how to book flights on MakeMyTrip" or "flight booking app download." Neither searcher wants your service. Without regular negative keyword updates, you keep paying for those impressions and clicks.

The search terms report (covered in an earlier post) shows you every actual query that triggered your ad. Reviewing it weekly and pulling out irrelevant terms is the single highest-return maintenance task in any Google Ads account. Ten minutes a week, every week, compounds into a measurably better cost per lead over a quarter.

Building your first negative list

Start with the obvious clusters. For most service businesses in India, these categories cover the bulk of wasted spend:

• Job seekers: salary, vacancy, recruitment, career, hiring (unless you are a staffing firm)
• DIY and free: free, template, download, PDF, sample, how to, tutorial
• Competitors and apps: brand names of platforms your prospects might confuse with your service
• Wrong geography: city or country names where you do not operate

Google Ads lets you create shared negative keyword lists and apply them across campaigns. Use one list per theme. A "job seekers" list applied to all your service campaigns saves you from re-adding the same terms in every campaign individually.

Match types inside negatives

Negative keywords have their own match type logic, and it works differently from regular keywords. A negative broad match blocks a search only when every word in your negative appears in the query, in any order. A negative phrase match blocks when the words appear in that exact sequence. A negative exact match blocks only the precise query.

This means a broad match negative of "free consultation" blocks "free consultation for GST" but does not block "consultation free of charge" (because the word-order check fails). If you want to block everything containing "free," add "free" as a single-word negative broad match. For multi-word negatives, phrase match is usually the safer bet because it catches more variations without overblocking.

The weekly review habit

Open your search terms report every Monday. Sort by cost, descending. Any query that spent money and has nothing to do with your service gets added as a negative. Queries that are close but wrong deserve a second look. Sometimes the issue is your ad copy attracting the wrong audience rather than the keyword itself.

Keep a running document of every negative you add and why. Three months in, this document becomes a blueprint you can apply to any new campaign in the same vertical. A clinic running Google Ads for "physiotherapy near me" and another clinic running ads for "orthopaedic consultation" will share roughly 60 percent of their negative list.

Account-level versus campaign-level

Google now offers account-level negatives, which block terms across every campaign without needing shared lists. Use account-level negatives for universally irrelevant terms: your own brand misspellings that trigger a separate brand campaign, or terms like "jobs" if you are not a recruiter. Keep campaign-level negatives for terms that are wrong in one campaign but relevant in another. A staffing firm would never add "jobs" as a negative in its recruitment campaign, but might add it in a campaign promoting consulting services.

When negatives hide real demand

There is a cost to being too aggressive. Blocking "cheap" sounds sensible for a premium service, but if your actual prospects search "cheap business class flights" and you sell discounted business fares, that negative costs you leads. The same applies to "near me" variations, vernacular spellings, and regional slang. Base every negative on data from your own search terms report, not on assumptions about what your audience would or would not type.

A quarterly audit of your negative list is worth the time. Remove terms you added early that no longer match your campaigns. Check whether any negatives conflict with keywords you have added since. Google Ads flags some conflicts in the recommendations tab, but it misses cross-campaign issues.

FAQ

How many negative keywords should a typical account carry?

Mature accounts in competitive service verticals typically carry 200 to 500 negatives across their shared lists. Start with 30 to 50 from your initial research, then let the weekly search terms review grow the list naturally. Padding a list with speculative terms you have never seen in your data wastes effort and risks blocking legitimate traffic.

Do negative keywords work in Performance Max campaigns?

Performance Max campaigns do not accept campaign-level negatives through the interface, but account-level negatives apply to them. If your Performance Max campaign drives irrelevant search traffic, add those terms at the account level. Review the insights tab for search themes to spot problems. The reporting is less detailed than standard search campaigns, so check it more often rather than less.

Should I add competitor names as negatives?

It depends on your strategy. If someone searches "Cleartrip customer care number" and you are a travel desk, that click is almost certainly wasted. Add the competitor name as a negative. But if someone searches "Cleartrip alternative for group bookings" and you offer that service, you might want that impression. Test both approaches with a small budget before committing. The search terms report will show you whether competitor-adjacent traffic converts or just drains your daily spend.