Negative Keywords
Negative = Positive
If your keyword list contains broad or phrase match keywords then negative keywords are most often a must. Negative keywords prevent your ads from appearing and potentially receiving clicks from search queries that are not relevant to your product or service. Suppressing impressions (and clicks) from irrelevant search queries will improve your CTR and quality score and allow your keyword list to work harder to bring qualified prospects to your website.
AdWords Offers the Following Negative Match types:
Negative Broad Matched – To create a standard negative keyword, insert a minus sign before a keyword and add it to your ad group or campaign.
Example: -free download
Adding this negative keyword to your account would prevent your ads from showing on any search queries containing the terms free and download Your ads still have the potential to appear for variations of these terms. Your ads will also still show on search queries that only contain one of the terms.
For example, the search queries software download and free software could trigger your ads, while free software download will not.
Negative “Phrase” Matched - To create a negative phrase matched keyword surround the term with quotation marks.
Example: -”free download“
Adding this keyword the system wouldn’t let any search query containing the phrase free download trigger your ads. The search query free download accounting software would not trigger your ads. However, your ads could possibly show on the search query download accounting software or free accounting software.
Negative [Exact] Matched – To create a negative exact matched keyword surround the term with brackets
Example: -[free download]
This negative keyword would only prevent your ads from showing on the search query free download. Search queries such as free accounting software download and free software could still trigger your ads.
It is suggested to add relevant variations of your negative keywords, including both the singular and plural forms. Learn to add effective negative keywords to your ad group or campaign.
Now that we have some familiarity with negative keyword match types the next question is how do we identify negatives to add to the account? AdWords offers two tools to identify negative keywords.
The search query report is a very helpful report to identifying negative keywords. This report will show advertisers what the actual query was that resulted in their ads being served. You can use this report to identify negative keyword to add to your account.
2. Keyword Tool.
The keyword tool can be used to identify negative keywords.
Select and include your negative keyword.
Adding Negative keywords is easy. They can be added at the campaign level to cover all adgroups or at the ad group level if the negative keywords are specific to one category. Google has even recently added the ability to create negative keyword lists so that advertisers can easily create master keyword lists that can be attached to adgroups or campaigns.
Research your Search Query Reports regularly to identify negative keywords. Negative keywords will improve your CTR and preserve your budget by showing your ads to only the best prospects for business.
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 Article by: +Kim Clinkunbroomer Clinks Web Service a Google AdWords Partner Company Subscribe: RSS Feeds | Follow me on Twitter |
I’m a huge fan of your blog and I check it regularly. Keep up the excellent work!
negative KWs can be identified by showing exact search phrases in adwords (rather than viewing the broad match as shown by default). This stops you having to guess neg KWs and in turn will improve your campaign performance
Great blog you got here!
Do you think negative KW can also influence/control which ads get displayed across similar ad groups?
I had the idea that to make sure AdWords triggers the right agroups, I would add the other ad group names as negative KW at the ad group level.
i.e. 3 x ad groups named:
roof racks, roof boxes, roof bars
roof boxes, roof bars are then negative KW to roof racks.
Would this be a sound way to ensure the roof racks ads always get triggered and not in the other two?
(considering they all have broad, phrase & exact match terms)
Hi Stu,
You are spot on! That is a perfect use for negative keywords! I often find that the wrong ad groups ads can be served because the keywords are similar (broad and phrase) and to insure that the right ad text is served crossing adgroups with negatives is the way to go.
Thanks for visiting.
Kim
Hi, Kim!
Thanks for the practical article. One question – I tried running a search query report, but it appears that only keywords that have actually triggered a click are listed (confirmed when I re-ran the same report, but set it so that only clicks=0 would be displayed, and the report contained nothing). I would like to find out what the keywords are that triggered impressions, but not clicks (because those are what’s dragging down the CTR). Any ideas on how to do that?
Thanks in advance,
Aviva
Great Article…
I think many people doing adwords PPC still do not make use of -ve keywords list! Adding a -ve keyword list is probably one of THE most important things you can do to bring your QS and ROI up!
I mainly just set the -ve keywords at the campaign level. That way they are much easier to handle.
I’m shocked! Your post has really made me sit up and notice. I think I will talk about your article.
Thank you.
Here’s a question for you then.
What is the difference between broad or phrase matching a 1-word keyword?
Take the keyword ‘free’ for example.
Explain the differences between adding it as a negative broad or a negative phrase match.
Hi Jarad,
I have not actually split tested a broad match: apples against “apples” but have seen it in action when auditing accounts and can say that the one word phrase match seems to act just like a broad match less the synonyms so maybe a little more control. Frankly I cant even think of any accounts I work with where we have one word keywords…
Now when it comes to negatives the broad and phrase match should act the same.
If you dont want to show for anything ‘free’ then a broad match free.
If you want to show for ‘sugar free cookies’ but not ‘free sugar cookies’ then a negative phrase match of -”free cookies” is necessary.
If you are worried that you may have added a wrong negative you can run the Diagnose Keyword tool under your KEYWORDS tab and the > more options button. It will let you know if you are not active due to a negative keyword in your account.
Questions welcome.
Kim