Digital Lexicon Hub

Search terms added to paid search campaigns to stop ads from showing for queries that contain them.

Negative keywords stop spend on searches that will never convert, such as job seekers or people looking for free tools, which lowers cost per lead and keeps campaign data focused on real buyer intent.

A B2B software account reviews 30 days of search terms and finds 18% of spend on queries with free, jobs and login. It adds them to a shared negative keyword list applied to all Search campaigns.

Negatives do not match close variants, so plurals, misspellings and synonyms must be added separately. Overly broad negatives can block valuable searches, and with broad match and automation, reviewing search terms is an ongoing task.

Google Ads supports negative broad match, the default, which blocks queries containing all the terms in any order; negative phrase match, which blocks the terms in that order; and negative exact match, which blocks only that exact query. They can be set at ad group, campaign or account level or in shared lists of up to 5,000 terms. In Display and Video campaigns negatives act as broad match. They support Search Intent and Quality Score in Paid Search.