How to Add Negative Keywords in Google Ads

To add negative keywords in Google Ads, open Campaigns, go to Audiences, keywords and content, choose Search keywords, and open the Negative search keywords tab. Click the plus button, pick the campaign or ad group, type one term per line, set the match type with symbols (plain text for broad, “quotation marks” for phrase, [square brackets] for exact), and click Save. That is the whole procedure for one campaign, and the rest of this guide covers the other places a negative can live, the symbols, and how to check that the block is doing what you meant.

The menu names in this guide match Google Ads Help as checked on 2026-10-31. Google moves things around often, and its own help pages sometimes call the same screen “Keywords” with a “Negative keywords” tab, so if a label looks different in your account, look for those words. If you want the background first, there is a separate guide to what negative keywords are and why they matter, and this page sticks to the doing.

Decide where the negative should go

Before you click anything, decide how far the block should reach, because Google Ads gives you four places to put a negative and each one covers a different amount of the account. Putting a term too high blocks searches you wanted in other campaigns, and putting it too low means adding the same word again and again as new campaigns appear.

A workable rule is to put a term at the lowest level that covers every place it is wrong. A word that no customer of yours would ever use, such as “salary” for a business that does not recruit through ads, belongs at the account level or on a list applied to every campaign. A word that is wrong for one service but right for another belongs on the campaign or ad group where it causes trouble.

Add negative keywords to a campaign or ad group

This is the method you will use most, and it works the same way whether you are adding one term or fifty. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon, open the Audiences, keywords and content menu, and click Search keywords. Go to the Negative search keywords tab and click the plus button.

Choose whether the negatives are for all campaigns or a specific one, then select the campaign, or the ad group inside it if the block should stay that narrow. Type or paste your terms with one per line, adding the symbols for the match type you want. If you are adding to a campaign, you can also tick “Save to new or existing list” and give the list a name, which saves a step later if other campaigns need the same terms. Click Done or Save, depending on the screen, and the negatives apply from then on.

Google’s instructions carry one warning that is worth repeating here: make sure your negatives do not overlap your regular keywords, because an overlap “will cause your ad not to show”. A negative of “repair” in a campaign built around “furnace repair” switches the campaign off for exactly the searches it exists for, and nothing on the screen will stop you from saving it.

Add negatives from the search terms report

The search terms report is where most negatives come from in a running account, because it shows what people actually typed when your ad appeared. Click the Campaigns icon, open Insights and reports, and click Search terms. Tick the boxes beside the terms you want to block, then click Add as negative keyword, and choose whether the negatives go to the ad group or campaign each term came from, to an existing negative keyword list, or to a new list.

There is a default here that catches a lot of people. Google states that negatives added to a Search campaign from the search terms report are added as negative exact match, so ticking “plumber apprenticeship calgary” blocks that search, typed with no extra words, and very little else. The next person who types “plumbing apprenticeship alberta” can still see your ad. When the real problem is a single word, edit the entry before you save it, or add the word itself as a broad negative afterwards, so the block covers the whole family of searches rather than one of them.

Two more limits are worth knowing. The report lists search terms used by “a significant number of people”, and Google leaves low-volume searches out for privacy reasons, so some of the searches you paid for will never appear in it. Google also notes that if you build the search terms view through the Report editor instead, you cannot add negatives directly from it, so use the Search terms page under Insights and reports when you mean to act.

Choose the match type with symbols

For Search campaigns, the symbols you type decide which searches a negative blocks. They look like the symbols for the match types on the keywords you bid on, but negatives behave differently, because they do not match close variants, plurals or synonyms. Google’s own example is a broad negative of “flowers”, which blocks “red flowers” but not “red flower”.

Other characters follow their own rules, and this is where the common question about which symbol to use really gets answered. Google recognises three symbols inside a negative: ampersands, accent marks and asterisks. That means “socks & shoes” and “socks and shoes” count as two different negatives, as do “sidewalk cafe” and “sidewalk café”. Periods are ignored, so “Fifth Ave.” and “Fifth Ave” are treated as the same term, and plus signs are usually ignored too, except in cases like “C++”. Characters such as commas, exclamation marks, the @ sign, percent signs, round brackets, curly braces and question marks produce an error.

Because negatives skip close variants, add the singular and plural yourself when both bring in the wrong people, along with the obvious synonyms. Blocking “jobs” does not block “careers”. Casing and misspellings are the exception, since Google says negatives account for those automatically. One more edge case: on a search longer than 16 words, your ad might still show if the negative comes after the 16th word.

Create and apply a negative keyword list

A list is the tidy answer when several campaigns need the same exclusions, because adding a term to the list updates every campaign it is applied to. The quickest way to create one is from the Negative search keywords tab: add your terms to a campaign as above and tick “Save to new or existing list”. To apply an existing list to one campaign, use the plus button on the same tab, choose Use negative keyword list, tick the lists you want and click Save.

To apply a list to many campaigns at once, click the Tools icon, open Shared library, click Exclusion lists and go to the Negative keyword lists tab. Select the list, click Apply to campaigns, tick the campaigns and click Done. Google says a list can be applied to up to 1,000 campaigns at one time, and the same screen lets you select campaigns and remove the list from them. The harder part is deciding what belongs on a shared list rather than on one campaign, which has its own guide.

Add negatives at the account level

Account-level negatives sit in a different part of the interface. Click the Admin icon (some versions of Google’s help call this first step Settings rather than Admin), click Account settings, expand the Negative keywords section, click the plus button, and enter one word or phrase per line before clicking Save. To set the match type on this screen, use the drop-down in the Match type column next to each term.

Google states that account-level negatives apply automatically to all Search and Shopping inventory in Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart and Local campaigns, up to a limit of 1,000 terms. That reach is the point of this level, and it is also the risk. A term added here affects campaigns you set up later as well, so keep this level for words that will never be right for the business.

Performance Max, Display and Video

Performance Max campaigns can now take negatives at the campaign level. Google’s steps are the same tab as any other campaign: go to Keywords in the Campaigns menu, open the Negative keywords tab, click the plus button, select the Performance Max campaign, and add terms one per line or choose an existing list. Google notes that Performance Max negatives apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, so they will not keep a Performance Max ad off a YouTube video or a Display placement.

Display and Video campaigns work differently again. Every negative you add there is treated as broad match and the match type cannot be changed, Google considers a maximum of 1,000 negatives, which its help describes as an account-level limit, and it warns that your ads may still occasionally appear on pages containing the excluded terms. For those campaigns, Google points to site category options and content exclusions as the better way to avoid unrelated sites and videos. Smart Display campaigns are a further exception, because negative keyword lists cannot be applied to them and keywords can only be excluded manually.

Check that your negatives are working

Adding a negative is half the job, because a block that is too narrow lets the search through and a block that is too wide quietly removes searches you wanted. Once the campaign has run for a while with the new negatives, open the search terms report again for the period since the change. The searches you meant to block should no longer appear, keeping in mind that the report leaves out low-volume searches, so their absence is a good sign rather than proof. If a close relative is still showing up, that is usually a plural, a synonym or the exact-match default from the report.

Then look the other way. If impressions for a keyword you care about fall sharply after a round of edits, the newest negatives are the first thing to check, since a conflict with your own keywords looks exactly like that. To review or fix a campaign’s negatives, open the same Negative search keywords tab, hover over a term and click the pencil icon to change the text or match type, or tick the box beside it and click Remove. Account-level terms are edited the same way under Admin, Account settings, Negative keywords, and the download button above either table gives you a copy of the full list.

An illustrative example from a Calgary search terms review

This is an illustrative example, not a real account. Picture a Calgary plumbing company with one Search campaign and two ad groups, one for drain cleaning and one for water heater installation. After two weeks, its search terms report shows “plumber apprenticeship calgary” and “plumber salary alberta” with clicks and no calls, and it also shows “water heater leaking calgary” being matched to the drain cleaning ad group, whose ad and landing page say nothing about water heaters.

The owner first ticks the apprenticeship and salary searches and clicks Add as negative keyword, then remembers that the report saves them as exact match. Rather than blocking two long searches, the owner adds “apprenticeship”, “apprentice”, “salary” and “jobs” as broad negatives at the account level, since the company never recruits through ads. The water heater search is a different kind of problem, because it is a good search sitting in the wrong place. The owner adds “water heater” as a phrase negative to the drain cleaning ad group only, which leaves those searches to the water heater ad group and its own ad, and does not block them anywhere else.

Two weeks later, the owner checks the search terms report again for the period since the change. The job searches no longer appear in the report, and the water heater searches that do show up are now matched to the water heater ad group, which is what was intended. The negative only stopped the drain cleaning ad group from serving them; whether the right ad group then shows depends on its own keywords and the auction. Nothing in this review needed a bigger budget, only a clear decision about where each block belonged.

Getting help with negative keywords

The procedure itself is quick once you know where the screens are. What takes judgement is choosing the level, writing each term so it blocks the right family of searches, and checking afterwards that nothing you wanted was caught along the way. SEO Company To-The-TOP! is a Calgary-based, Google Ads certified practice working in search since 2007, and the person who reviews your account is the person who does the work. If you would like a second look at your negatives and search terms, or at Google Ads management more generally, call (403) 308-5949.