Sometimes, being negative is okay, especially when it comes to your Google ads campaigns. Negative keywords or phrases can help you see better results with your ad campaigns and put more of your investment towards people who actually want to spend money with your business. By the end of this blog, you will understand every aspect of “Negative Keywords”.
What are Negative Keywords?
Appearing as an ad for a particular keyword unrelated to your business would actually make you lose money because the people searching for that term are not looking for what you are selling, and that’s where negative keywords come in. Negative keywords are a type of keywords that are used to prevent your ads from being triggered by people who are actively searching queries unrelated to the services or products you provide.
For example, when you add “free” as a negative keyword to your campaign or ad group, you tell Google Ads not to show your ad for any search containing the term “free.”
How Google Ads negative keywords help your business?
Google wants you to create a good user experience with your ads. Google Ads uses your expected click-through rate, your ad’s relevance to the user, and your landing page experience to determine your quality score. Using negative keywords helps you narrow your ad targeting down to the most relevant searches, meaning your ad will reach the most relevant people.
- Negative keywords help tremendously in tightening the relevance of your ad groups, so that one ad speaks to an entire set of keywords, but also increasing the chances of people clicking on your ad and actually converting.
- Negative keywords can help to improve CTR which ensures your ads only run against relevant queries, exposing your account to more interested impressions, reducing the number of wasted clicks, in turn increasing the proportion of high-quality, relevant users that click on your ad.
- Not only does this save your business money but also improves your ROAS (Return on Ad Spend), ensuring that advertising expenditure is focused in the right place and on the right people.
Three types of Negative Keywords
Before you start listing your negative keywords, you should know that there are few types of negative keywords you can select for your ads. There are 3 types of Negative Keywords that enable you to not show your ads in the places where you don’t.
- Negative Broad Match Keywords
- Negative Phrase Match Keywords
- Negative Exact Match Keywords
Negative Broad Match Keywords
Negative Broad Match Keywords restrict your ads the most, so use them wisely. With this type of negative keyword, your ad will not appear if search uses all of your restricted keyword terms in any order. One must be careful when using negative broad match keywords as they can limit your reach even more so than exact and phrase match keywords. When assigning these particular keywords firstly ensure all variants have been researched and you’re certain you don’t want to be shown for any related topic or subject around the negative keyword.
Example
| Negative Broad Match Keyword: winter outfit | ||
|---|---|---|
| Search Query | Could Ad show? | |
| party outfit | Yes | |
| holiday outfit | Yes | |
| pretty winter outfit | No | |
| outfit for winter | No | |
| winter outfit | No | |
Negative Phrase Match Keywords
In terms of restrictiveness, Negative Phrase Match keywords match falls somewhere between broad match and exact match. With this negative match type, you can exclude your unwanted phrases, but the words have to appear in the same order. The word or phrase you use for negative phrase match can have additional words attached to them. Phrase match is probably the safest option to go for as the search query has to explicitly quote the keyword within the search phrase. This limits the risk of hiding your ads from too many searches but also narrows down the audience you want your ad to be shown to.
Example
| Negative Phrase Match Keyword: "winter outfit" | ||
|---|---|---|
| Search Query | Could Ad show? | |
| party outfit | Yes | |
| holiday outfit | Yes | |
| pretty winter outfit | No | |
| outfit for winter | Yes | |
| winter outfit | No | |
Negative Exact Match Keywords
Negative Exact Match Keywords are the least restrictive of the three match types. Your ads won’t appear if someone searches using the exact phrase you specify. Negative exact match keywords avoid displaying your ad in searches that include the keyword phrase as it is, with no variation. An exact match of negative keyword type can be opted when you want to run ads related to your brand name or if you want to offer a product that is similar to your competitor.
Example
| Negative Exact Match Keyword: [winter outfit] | ||
|---|---|---|
| Search Query | Could Ad show? | |
| party outfit | Yes | |
| holiday outfit | Yes | |
| pretty winter outfit | Yes | |
| outfit for winter | Yes | |
| winter outfit | No | |
How can you find negative keywords?
Identifying Negative Keywords during initial research stages
From the very beginning, it’s important you conduct keyword research so that you can understand the language of your target audience when searching for your product, services and content. This involves analysing, comparing and prioritising the best keyword opportunities for your site. During the process of analysing the search terms you want to target; you can simultaneously begin picking out terms to add to your negative keyword list.
Google Ads’ Keyword Planner
Inside the Google ad keyword planner, you can search for the keywords you are targeting and then see the ideas that come out of it. This way you’ll see what type of research people do around your keyword and pick those you don’t want to bid for. In other words, the keyword that isn’t related to your business.
The below image indicates Negative Keyword research done using Google Ads Keyword Planner.
Google Suggest
You can start typing in google and see the suggestions that come out. If you see search results that aren’t related or terms you want to dodge, then add them to your list. This will help you to spot any terms that you want to avoid giving you a good idea of which negative keyword might end up making you waste ad budget.
The below image indicates Negative Keyword research done using Google’s Suggest feature.
Identifying Negative keywords in Search Term Reports
If you already have ads running in Google Ads, you can look at the keywords your ads are appearing for and see if there are any irrelevant ones you can eliminate. Then, using the knowledge you just gained about the negative keyword match types, you can go to the “Negative Keywords” section of your account and add those undesirable words and phrases to your campaigns or ad groups.
The below image points out negative keywords found using Google Ads ‘Search Term Report’ while the ad is running.
Keyword Research Tools
If you’re looking to build a new list of negative keywords, you can start your research with a keyword tool. Tools like Uber Suggest, Ahrefs, or SEMrush all have keyword suggestion features that will help you build your negative keyword list.
Campaign Level Negative Keywords Vs Ad Group Level Negative Keywords
Keep in mind, the negative keywords you add at the campaign level may act differently as compared to the negative keywords added at the ad group level. The former is used when you don’t want your ads to show up for a given search at all.
For example, if you sell soccer shoes, but you don’t sell red-colored shoes and never will, so you want to negative “red soccer shoes.”
Ad group level negative keywords, on the other hand, can be used to protect certain ad groups and ensure control over specific ad group only.
For example, in one ad group you may be promoting your “red running shoes” thus creating a negative keyword list with the term “red” for ad group which promotes “soccer shoes” as seen in the earlier example.
Functions of Negative Keywords
- For search campaigns while selecting the negative keywords, we need to look for the search terms which might somewhat relate to the actual keywords, but might not be suitable when the user is searching for another product.
- When you select a set of negative keywords for display or video campaigns, it’ll prevent targeting unrelated links or videos that contain those negative keywords.
- The Negative Keywords in the case of Display or Video Campaigns will not function precisely like in that Search Campaign. This means that despite setting the negative keywords, there are still chances that your Display or Video Ads might still appear on the sites which contain these keywords.
Once you have your list of negative keywords ready, you can add it to your Google Ads account. Then get ready to start saving money and earn more qualified leads for your business.
