Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are the words and phrases you tell Google you do NOT want to show up for, so you stop paying for searches that were never going to become customers.

You run any campaign long enough and you start seeing it: your ad turning up next to "free," next to "jobs," next to a competitor's name, next to people who clearly want something you do not sell. Every one of those clicks costs you and none of them buy. Negative keywords are how you cut them off. You add the word once, and Google stops matching you to searches that contain it.

Think of them as the steering that keeps loose matching honest. If broad match is the accelerator, your negative list is the wheel that keeps you on the road. The two are meant to work together, you let Google reach wide, then you carve away the wrong intent, the wrong audience, and the tire-kickers with a growing list of negatives you build from what you actually see.

Be careful how hard you steer. Negatives use match types too, and a broad negative can block far more than you meant to. Add "cheap" as a broad negative and you might quietly kill a search like "cheap flights to Goa" that would have converted. Over-add them, or pick the wrong match type on them, and you block good traffic without ever knowing it happened.

Negatives are your steering wheel, not a wall, so turn with intent.