Liz MooreheadIs it just me, or does running Google Ads campaigns sometimes feel like a dumb game of telephone?
Sure, things start out OK. You put your bids in to show up in relevant searches, and that’s exactly what happens. But over time, your returns start to go a little sideways. Your ads show for searches that are technically related, but are spiritually unrelated, as well as commercially a complete waste of time.
You sell premium eyeglasses, and somehow Google sees “wine glasses.” You sell new standing desks, and now your budget is getting introduced to people looking for used furniture, repair instructions, and DIY plans they found while avoiding actual work.
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Oh, Google.
It means well.
But this why one of your best lines of offense with Google Ads is a good defense, in the form of something called negative keywords. (Can a dad chime in and let me know if that metaphor worked? I think it did, but I’m open to workshopping it.)
What are negative keywords in Google Ads?
Negative keywords are terms you exclude so your ads don’t display for searches that aren’t relevant to your business.
In plain English, negative keywords help you stop paying for the wrong people.
That could mean people looking for:
- products you don’t sell
- price points you don’t want
- product conditions you don’t offer
- research you don’t need to pay for
- jobs, careers, tutorials, repairs, or other side quests unrelated to the sale
Negative keywords are one of the clearest ways to improve targeting quality in Google Ads, in addition to having a clear strategy for what keywords you do want to target.
The fastest way to find negative keywords: the Search terms report
If you want the shortest correct answer to how to find negative keywords, here’s what you do:
Start with the Search terms report.
Even Google says you should start with it because, like you, they’re not interested in wasting your money either. The Search terms report shows the actual queries people typed that triggered your ads.
I love this report, personally. Because we can wax poetically about our “hunches” and our “gut” and our “instinct” and our “deep, deep understanding” about what our buyers are searching for. But this report gives you hard data about what your buyers are actually searching for.
The other bonus for you is that this report will open you up to blindspots you didn’t even realize you had… but not because you’re bad at your job.
For example, you could have a keyword that makes total sense: it’s relevant, it’s directly tied to what you do or sell. But the search terms it matches to can still get weird quickly. That’s where negative keyword opportunities show up most clearly.
A strong habit here is to review the report regularly and look for terms that are:
- clearly unrelated to your product
- wrong-category
- wrong-price-point
- wrong-intent
- wrong-location
- wrong-audience
So, become best friends with the Search Terms report, so you’re no longer guessing what might be irrelevant. Instead, you’re looking at the real searches that already cost you money or impressions.
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But what about search terms that aren’t clearly negative?
Of course, finding negative keywords in the Search Terms report isn’t always that simple. (I’m sorry!) Yes, you’ll often come across the obvious “no-no” keywords — our previous example of nixing “wine” as a negative keyword when you sell fashionable glasses for your face.
But it does get tricky when you come across terms that are adjacent to what you do or sell… and are still unhelpful.
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For instance:
- Free: people looking for free versions, free templates, free samples, or free tools
- Cheap: if you are selling premium products and bargain intent is a bad fit
- Used: if you only sell new items
- DIY or how to make: if the person wants instructions instead of a product
- Jobs, careers, salary: if people are looking for employment, not what you sell
- Repair, manual, replacement parts: if you are not in that business
- Wrong product types: adjacent items you do not actually carry
- Wrong audience modifiers: searches that describe a customer you do not serve
The point is to find the patterns in wasted intent, not just random one-off queries.
Other places to find negative keywords
1. Your own product and category knowledge
OK, I know I was a butthead earlier, knocking your hard-won instincts about your ideal buyers, but your experience is actually very valuable. You already know a lot about what you do not sell.
If you sell premium luggage, you probably know you don’t want traffic for repair parts, secondhand luggage, kids’ toys, or generic craft projects involving suitcases for some reason. If you sell luxury skincare, you probably know whether “cheap,” “homemade,” or “DIY” is the wrong crowd.
Make a list of those obvious mismatch terms before launch. This isn’t work you should do after you turn on the budget faucet, so Google can put your ads in front of people.
2. Google autocomplete, related searches, and keyword tools
Google itself can help you find negative keyword patterns. When you start typing in your core product terms, autocomplete suggestions and related searches can reveal the kinds of modifiers people commonly add. Some of those will be useful targets. Some will be obvious negatives.
Keyword Planner and third-party keyword tools can help here too.
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3. Site search data
If you have internal site search data, this can be surprisingly useful. It can show the language real users use, the products they expect you to carry, and the mismatches between what your brand attracts and what your catalog actually offers.
Campaign-level, ad group-level, and account-level negative keywords
Google currently supports account-level negative keywords, which exclude terms across eligible search and shopping inventory. That is useful for broad exclusions like jobs, careers, or categories you never want anywhere in the account.
Then you have campaign-level negatives, which are useful when a whole campaign should avoid certain searches.
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Then there are ad group-level negatives, which are often useful for sculpting traffic more precisely so one ad group does not cannibalize another or so each group stays focused on its own intent.
A good rule of thumb is the broader the mismatch, the broader the scope should usually be.
Avoid these two mistakes with negative keywords
Negative keyword discovery is a bit of an art and a science, so it’ll take you time to get totally comfortable with it. Kind of like playing the piano… well, according to my old piano teacher. I quit piano lessons after two weeks to play kickball instead, so what do I know?
Horrible metaphors and my lack of musical commitment aside, while there are many, many ways to “screw up” your approval to negative keywords in Google Ads, really there are only two big categories of mistakes to avoid.
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First, don’t neglect your account. Do this work. Review search terms. Use that fantastic brain of yours to make sure you’re not turning your Google Ads account into a money pit.
Second, don’t swing to the other extreme with overcorrection. When you first experience the blindside of seeing you’re showing up for dumb search terms, and you realize you’re paying for it, you might feel the urge to go on a negative keyword spree. Don’t do that. Be smart.
Negative keywords aren’t a chore, they’re part of your strategy
They’re part of how you protect traffic quality and keep Google Ads from wandering off and spending money on people who were never a fit in the first place.
That means the job’s bigger than spotting a few weird search terms and cleaning things up after the fact. You want a repeatable habit. You want to know what bad-fit traffic tends to look like for your business. You want to catch obvious mismatches before launch, then keep refining once real query data starts coming in. You also want enough judgment not to start blocking every imperfect search just because it didn’t convert on the first pass.
That’s really the balancing act. Too little negative keyword work, and the account gets sloppy. Too much, and you start choking off useful traffic because you got trigger-happy with exclusions. The goal isn’t to build the world’s most aggressively filtered account. The goal is to make sure your ads are showing up for searches that actually have a shot at turning into useful business.
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So when you’re looking for negative keywords, start with the Search terms report. Then look for patterns. Look for wasted intent. Look for the searches that make you think, “Why on earth would we pay for that?” That’s usually where the next round of cleanup belongs.
And if your account keeps surfacing a lot of those terms, that’s telling you something too. Usually it means the issue isn’t just a missing negative keyword or two. It means the targeting, match types, structure, or keyword strategy needs a harder look. That’s the part worth paying attention to next.
