When you start a Google Ads campaign, you will surely have already planned the structure, the ads and the keywords for which you are going to bid.
However, there is a type of word that many people do not take into account when starting a Google Ads campaign and can save you a lot of clicks that are not of interest and, therefore, savings on investment.
These keywords are negative keywords. Below I explain how they work and some tips for their correct use.
How do they work
Negative keywords prevent your keywords from participating in the Google Ads bid when a user performs a search on Google, thus preventing the investment from being wasted.
I give you an example:
Imagine that your business is dedicated to the sale of costumes and you sell only to an adult audience. It is convenient that you add a list of negative keywords related to searches for costumes for a child audience, so you would add negative keywords such as children, babies, etc.
You could also include terms related to searches for homemade costumes since this is a type of user who has no intention of buying a costume.
Negative keyword search tools
keyword planner
Google Keyword Planner can give you a list of both keywords to include in your campaign and keywords you don’t want to get clicked on your ads.
Within the planner you have the option to Discover new keywords. Access this option and add your keywords. At the moment you will have a list of keywords and you will be able to detect which ones you are interested in negative.
We continue with the example of the adult Halloween costume company. According to the planner it gives us the following results
As you can see, there are several searches that are related to children’s costumes and homemade Halloween costumes and they also have a high search volume, so it is very convenient to exclude them from your campaigns.
You can access the keyword planner through the .
Search terms report
It is one of the main pieces of advice that I am going to give you: consult the term search report frequently as it will give you first-hand information on how they have searched for you and what words they have come to use.
Users search in various ways and it is very possible that they perform searches that are not of interest to your campaign.
Do a spontaneous search on Google
Take the test and perform a search on Google to verify both the ads of your competition, the natural results of Google as well as the related searches offered by the search engine.
They are sources of extra information to investigate if new negative keywords should be included.
I provide you with some examples so you can verify what results they offer
In the related search results, search suggestions related to children’s terms and homemade Halloween costumes appear again.
In the natural results of Google, a website appears where second-hand costumes are sold. It is another type of term that we are not interested in generating traffic through our paid campaigns.
Negative keyword matches
Negative keywords can be included with different matches just like the keywords you bid on in your campaigns, so you should be especially careful with what type of match you include them.
And be careful with the following: including a negative keyword does not cover similar searches as a positive match would.
That is, if you negativize the term kids your ad can be displayed if a user makes the query of costumes for girls.
Therefore, when including a negative keyword you must include all its variants (plurals, singulars, misspellings and similar variations with articles or prepositions) to ensure that the ad is not shown to a search that is not relevant to the campaign.
If you want to know a little more about the latest changes that Google Ads has applied in the positive matches, I encourage you to read the
Negative keyword lists
Google ads allows you to have a list of negative keywords so that you can apply this list in different campaigns or ad groups, saving you time in duplicating keywords in different ad groups.
It is also a very interesting option to organize the list of refusals by a group of words such as: names of the competition, name of provinces / cities, etc.
The keyword list is located under Tools < Shared Library < Negative Keyword Lists.
Cross Negative Keywords
Don’t worry, it is not another type of negative keywords but a strategy to better optimize the performance of ad groups and have greater control over which ads are displayed to users.
Imagine that in your Google Ads for Costumes account you have an ad group with generic terms related to costumes and another ad group with keywords specific to witch costumes.
You can make the term witch (and remember its variables) negative in the generic ad group so that the Google campaign can show the ads that are associated with the witch ad group.
This will improve your CTR and your quality score by having much more relevant keywords.
If you have any questions about this post, need help with your paid campaigns or improve the position of your website in the results, we encourage you to contact us.
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