How to Create a Negative Keyword List in Google Ads

Somebody wants the clicks. Those are short. You build a list once, name it, then apply it to whichever campaigns you choose. Google documents the steps. This site covers negative keywords properly elsewhere.

So none of that gets repeated here. What follows is the other half of the question. Not how to build a negative keyword list. Rather what belongs inside one.

What This Page Leaves Alone

The three match types are settled elsewhere on this site. So is where negatives live. Pulling them out of your search terms report belongs over there as well, alongside the ordinary mistakes people make with them.

This page takes a narrower question instead. A list is a different object from a campaign negative. Different in a way that changes what should go in it. Where PPC fits next to organic work matters too, and that comparison lives on a separate page. The practical route to improving PPC performance usually starts with the same list this page skips. What sits behind many AdWords lists is worth a look once this narrower question is settled.

A Negative Keyword List Is Aimed at Nothing

Walk through a Google Ads account and ask what each thing was made for.

A keyword got bid on for one campaign. Somebody had that campaign open in front of them. An ad was written for one ad group, aimed at a person the writer could picture. A budget belongs to a campaign running right now.

Every one of those decisions got taken with something in view.

Then there is the list. A list gets built once and pointed at nothing in particular. Nothing about that is a flaw, since it is the entire feature. Point one at a single campaign and you did not make a list at all. You made campaign negatives with an extra step.

So a negative keyword list gets written for campaigns nobody has designed yet.

Somebody will point at the other shared things. Audience lists get applied across campaigns. So do shared budgets. Fair enough, and watch what happens to those. A budget gets argued about every time it lands on a new campaign, since the number is obviously about that campaign. Meanwhile a negative keyword list is applied precisely so nobody has to think about it again. That is what it is for.

So the Test Cannot Be Whether the Term Is Junk

Most advice stops at junk. Find the searches wasting money. Then block them.

Sound enough for a campaign. A list needs a harder question put to it. Is this term junk for anything I might ever sell?

Some words pass that forever. Hardly any business wants somebody hunting for a job. Anything about salaries. Whatever a student needs for an essay. Every word people attach when they want the thing for free. Those are junk to a plumber. They are junk to an accountant as well. Add them once and they will still be right in five years.

Then there are the terms that came out of one particular campaign. Say you sell installations. The word repair keeps turning up in your search terms report. Blocking it is correct today.

Put it on the master list and you have written a rule about a service you have not started selling yet.

Somebody Will Point at the Campaign Settings

You can see which lists are applied to a campaign. Nobody is hiding anything.

Only look at what you get. The name of the list. Nothing whatever about what is inside it.

Reading a name is not reading a list. So the visibility people point at confirms the thing rather than settling it.

The Applying Is Where the Decision Gets Made

Picture the two moments.

In March somebody writes the list. One campaign sits open in front of them. Beside it is a report full of wasted spend. Whoever is doing the writing knows exactly what should go.

In November somebody launches a campaign for a service that did not exist in March. The master list goes on, since applying it is simply what you do. That took a tick.

Nothing improper happened in either moment. Yet terms chosen in March are now deciding what a November campaign is allowed to reach. Meanwhile the act joining them was a checkbox.

Somebody Will Say They Wrote Their List Carefully

Plenty of people did. Care was never the difficulty here.

A careful decision about March’s campaign remains a decision about March’s campaign. Carefulness improves the terms. It does nothing at all about where they end up.

Two Lists, Never One

The fix costs nothing. No software comes into it either.

Keep one universal list holding only what you would apply blind. Job hunters and students. Anybody after something free. Words wrong for nearly anything you could sell, which is why they never go stale.

Then keep the narrower ones apart from it. Service names. Competitor terms. Anything drawn out of one line of work. Those go on deliberately, by somebody who opened the campaign first.

One question sorts the whole thing. Would I apply this to a campaign I have not designed yet, without reading it?

Where the Negative Keyword List Argument Stops

The damage here is small, and it comes back. Take a term off the list and those searches reach you again. Little else in marketing undoes itself so cleanly.

Nor is any of this a warning about the feature. Lists save real time, and an account without one repeats the same work over and over.

A business running one campaign for one service barely meets the problem. There the list and the campaign amount to the same object, so nothing travels anywhere. Where to start with doing negative keywords is a smaller question than most people expect going in. Negative keywords in plain terms just block searches, which is why the damage reverses so easily.

Read Your Own Negative Keyword List Cold

Open it. Then read it as though you were about to launch a campaign for something you have never sold before.

Now hunt for the first term you would have to take out.

Should nothing come up, you are holding a genuine universal list. Apply it freely and go and worry about something else.

Should something come up in the first ten lines, that was never a universal list. Rather it is one campaign’s negatives sitting in a shared folder, waiting to be ticked onto the next thing you launch.

No statistic about other advertisers settles which of those you hold. Yours is one screen away.

Google Ads Work at To-The-TOP!

That master list turns up often enough at SEO Company To-The-TOP!, built years ago and applied to everything since.

No guarantees. Businesses across Calgary get the same first hour of Google Ads work here. Often it goes on reading what is already switched on rather than adding anything. To-The-TOP! has been doing this work since 2007. Paid search sits beside search engine optimization for most clients, since the two answer different questions about one customer. Both of them start from keyword research. Each ends in content somebody had to write. The portfolio shows the keywords this work has reached. Understanding keyword theme in Google Ads is often the first thing worth checking on an existing account.

Common Questions About Negative Keyword Lists

How many negative keyword lists should an account have?

Two shapes, at minimum. One universal list you would apply to anything without reading it. Then a narrower list per service line, applied on purpose. Beyond that, the count matters far less than which of the two any given list is.

Can a negative keyword list block searches I wanted?

It can. That is the whole risk. A term written for one campaign keeps working after it gets applied somewhere it was never meant for.

Does a negative keyword list hurt my rankings?

No. Negatives sit inside Google Ads and touch no organic traffic. Your SEO and your negative keyword list never meet.

Should negative keywords go on a list or on the campaign?

Anything true of your whole business belongs on a list. Whatever is true of one campaign belongs on that campaign instead. The awkward middle is a term true of one service, and that one wants its own narrower list rather than the master.

How often should a negative keyword list be reviewed?

Whenever you launch something new, rather than on a calendar. The moment a list gets applied to an unfamiliar campaign is the moment its contents matter most. Reading it then is a short job.