How to Add Negative Keywords in Google Ads: A Step-by-Step Guide

Adding negative keywords to Google Ads prevents your ads from showing for irrelevant searches, saving budget and improving campaign performance. This guide walks you through the exact process—from finding wasteful search terms to adding negatives at the campaign, ad group, or account level. Whether you're managing one account or dozens, you'll learn the fastest methods to stop bleeding money on junk clicks.

If you've ever checked your search terms report and wondered why someone searching for "free" or "DIY" clicked your ad for a premium service, you already know the pain. Negative keywords are your defense against irrelevant traffic that eats your budget without converting.

The problem? Most advertisers know they should use them but either skip the process because it feels tedious or don't know where to start.

This guide fixes that. We'll cover the native Google Ads interface method, shared negative keyword lists, and faster workflows for when you're managing multiple campaigns. By the end, you'll have a repeatable system for keeping your search terms clean.

Step 1: Pull Your Search Terms Report to Find Wasteful Queries

Your search terms report is where Google shows you the actual queries that triggered your ads. This is different from your keyword list—it's what people actually typed before clicking.

Navigate to Insights & Reports, then click Search terms in the left sidebar. You'll see every query that generated at least one impression in your selected date range.

Start with the last 30 days. This gives you enough data to spot patterns without overwhelming yourself with thousands of rows. If you're running high-volume campaigns, you might narrow this to 7 or 14 days initially.

Sort the report by cost first. The most expensive irrelevant searches should be your priority—these are the ones actively draining your budget right now. One client I worked with was spending $400/month on searches containing "free" because they hadn't sorted by cost and kept adding random negatives instead of the expensive ones.

Then sort by impressions. High-impression, low-cost terms might seem harmless, but they're diluting your Quality Score and click-through rate. If a term has 5,000 impressions and zero clicks, Google notices that your ad isn't relevant for those searches.

Look for these patterns that almost always indicate junk traffic:

Free seekers: Any query containing "free," "free trial," "no cost," or "without paying" when you don't offer a free option.

Job hunters: Searches like "jobs," "careers," "salary," "hiring," or "[your industry] employment" unless you're actually recruiting.

DIY researchers: "How to," "DIY," "tutorial," "guide" when you're selling a done-for-you service.

Wrong audience: "For beginners," "basic," "simple" when you sell advanced solutions, or vice versa.

Competitor research: People searching "[competitor name] vs [your brand]" or "[competitor] alternative" who are just comparing, not buying.

Export the report if you prefer working in spreadsheets. Click the download icon and choose CSV. This lets you use filters, sort multiple columns, and build a master negative keyword list you can reference later. For a deeper dive into maximizing this data, check out our guide on search term report optimization.

What usually happens here is advertisers skim the first page, add a few obvious negatives, then forget about it. The real gold is in rows 50-200 where the subtle budget killers hide.

Step 2: Add Negative Keywords at the Ad Group Level

Ad group negatives are your precision tool. Use them when a search term is irrelevant to one product or service but perfectly valid for another in the same campaign.

From your search terms report, check the boxes next to irrelevant queries. Click the "Add as negative keyword" button that appears at the top of the table.

A dialog box opens asking where to add these negatives. Select "Ad group" and choose the specific ad group from the dropdown.

Here's a real scenario: You're running a campaign for online courses with two ad groups—one for beginner courses and one for advanced training. Someone searches "beginner SEO course" and triggers your advanced ad group because you're bidding on broad match "SEO course."

That's not a universal negative. "Beginner" is perfectly relevant to your beginner ad group. So you add "beginner" as a negative keyword only to the advanced ad group.

Same logic applies to price qualifiers. If you sell both budget and premium versions of a product, "cheap" should be negative for your premium ad group but not your budget one.

After adding negatives, verify they stuck. Navigate to your ad group, click Keywords in the left menu, then switch to the Negative keywords tab. Your additions should appear there within seconds. If you're unsure about the exact location, our guide on where to add negative keywords walks through every option.

Common mistake: Adding ad group negatives when you meant campaign-level. If a term is irrelevant to your entire campaign, don't add it to each ad group individually. That's unnecessary duplication and makes management harder later.

The mistake most agencies make is treating every negative as universal. They see "free" in the search terms and add it account-wide, then wonder why their free trial campaign stopped getting impressions. Ad group negatives prevent this.

Step 3: Add Negative Keywords at the Campaign Level

Campaign-level negatives are for terms that are universally irrelevant to an entire campaign, regardless of ad group. This is where you block broad concepts that will never convert for that specific campaign objective.

Navigate to Campaigns in the left sidebar, select the campaign you want to edit, then click Keywords, and switch to the Negative keywords tab. Click the blue plus button to add new negatives.

You'll see two options: add negative keywords directly or use a negative keyword list. For now, choose "Add negative keywords."

Type or paste your negative keywords, one per line. Google will automatically apply them to the campaign you selected.

Here's what typically goes at campaign level:

Universal intent blockers: "Free," "cheap," "discount," "coupon" for premium service campaigns where price isn't competitive.

Job seeker terms: "Jobs," "careers," "salary," "employment," "hiring" for any non-recruitment campaign.

Research-only queries: "What is," "definition," "meaning," "examples" when you're targeting commercial intent, not educational.

Platform-specific terms: "Reddit," "YouTube," "Quora," "forum" if you've found these sources don't convert for you.

Wrong product category: If you sell software but keep getting clicks for hardware, add "hardware," "physical," "device" as negatives.

In most accounts I audit, I find campaigns with 50+ ad group negatives that should have been campaign-level from the start. This creates unnecessary complexity when you need to update or remove a negative later.

Now here's where match types matter—and where Google Ads works differently than you might expect.

When you add "free" as a negative broad match keyword, it blocks any query containing the word "free" anywhere in the search. "Free trial," "trial free," "get free access"—all blocked.

But unlike positive broad match, negative broad match doesn't include close variants or synonyms. It won't block "complimentary" or "no cost" automatically. You need to add those separately if they're also problems.

Negative phrase match blocks queries containing the exact phrase in that order. Adding "how to" as negative phrase blocks "how to build a website" but not "website how to build."

Negative exact match blocks only that precise query, nothing else. It's rarely useful because you'd need to add every possible variation manually.

The default is negative broad match, which is what you want 90% of the time. We'll cover match types in more detail in Step 5.

Step 4: Create Shared Negative Keyword Lists for Account-Wide Exclusions

Shared negative keyword lists are the most underused feature in Google Ads, and they're absolute game-changers for account efficiency. Instead of adding the same negatives to every campaign manually, you create one master list and apply it everywhere.

Navigate to Tools & Settings (the wrench icon in the top right), then under Shared Library, click Negative keyword lists.

Click the blue plus button to create a new list. Give it a clear, descriptive name like "Universal Negatives" or "Job Seeker Terms."

Add your standard exclusions. Here's what goes in most accounts:

Universal Negatives list: Free, cheap, discount, coupon, promo, deal, bargain, affordable, inexpensive, budget.

Job Seeker Terms list: Jobs, careers, salary, employment, hiring, recruit, resume, apply, opening, position.

Research/Educational list: What is, how to, tutorial, guide, DIY, definition, meaning, examples, tips, advice.

Platform/Community list: Reddit, YouTube, Quora, forum, discussion, review site, blog post.

Competitor Names list: [Competitor 1], [Competitor 2], [Competitor 3] alternative, vs [competitor], [competitor] comparison.

Once you've created a list, apply it to campaigns. From the negative keyword list screen, click on your list name, then click "Apply to campaigns" at the top.

Select all campaigns where this list is relevant. You can apply the same list to multiple campaigns at once—this is the efficiency win. Google allows up to 20 campaigns per shared list. For a comprehensive starter template, see our negative keywords list for Google Ads.

The magic happens when you update a shared list. Add a new negative keyword to the list, and it automatically applies to every campaign using that list. No manual updates across dozens of campaigns.

What usually happens here is advertisers create shared lists, apply them once, then forget they exist. Six months later, they're manually adding the same negatives to new campaigns instead of just applying the existing list.

Set a reminder to review your shared lists monthly. As your account matures, you'll discover new universal negatives that should be added to your master lists.

One warning: Shared lists are powerful, which means they can also cause problems if you're not careful. Adding "review" to a universal negative list might seem smart until you realize it's blocking "review management software" searches that are perfectly relevant to one of your campaigns.

Keep your shared lists focused on truly universal terms. When in doubt, use campaign-level negatives instead.

Step 5: Choose the Right Negative Match Type for Each Term

Negative keyword match types work fundamentally differently than positive keyword match types, and this trips up even experienced advertisers. Understanding the difference prevents over-blocking and under-blocking.

Negative broad match is the default and most commonly used. It blocks any query containing all the words in your negative keyword, in any order, with other words before, after, or between them.

If you add "free trial" as negative broad match, it blocks "free trial software," "software free trial," "get a free 30-day trial," and "trial version free download." All of these contain both "free" and "trial" somewhere in the query.

But here's the critical difference from positive broad match: negative broad match does NOT include close variants, synonyms, or related searches. It won't automatically block "complimentary trial" or "no-cost trial" because those don't contain the word "free." For a complete breakdown of how this works, read our guide on negative keywords broad match.

Negative phrase match blocks queries containing the exact phrase in that specific order, but allows other words before or after.

Adding "how to" as negative phrase match blocks "how to build a website" and "how to learn SEO fast," but it doesn't block "website how to build" because the words aren't in the exact phrase order.

Use negative phrase match when word order matters. "Cheap lawyer" and "lawyer cheap" have the same intent, so negative broad works fine. But "New York pizza" and "pizza New York" might have different intent depending on your business.

Negative exact match blocks only the precise query you specify, with no variations whatsoever.

If you add [free software] as negative exact match, it blocks only "free software" and nothing else. Not "free software download," not "software free," not "free software tools." Just those two words in that exact order with nothing added.

Negative exact match is rarely useful because it's too restrictive. You'd need to add hundreds of variations manually to block all the irrelevant traffic.

The one scenario where negative exact match makes sense: You want to block a specific query but allow variations. For example, blocking [SEO] as exact match stops people searching just "SEO" (probably research) while allowing "SEO services," "SEO agency," "SEO consultant" through.

Common mistake: Using negative exact match when you meant negative broad match. An advertiser adds [free trial] thinking it will block all free trial searches. It doesn't—it only blocks the exact query "free trial" with nothing else. They keep getting clicks on "free trial software" and can't figure out why.

Another mistake: Over-blocking with negative broad match. Adding "review" as negative broad blocks "review management software," "peer review tools," and "code review platforms" if those contain your other keywords. Be specific: "product reviews" or "customer reviews" instead of just "review."

When in doubt, start with negative broad match for general concepts and negative phrase match for multi-word terms where order matters. Save negative exact match for rare edge cases.

Step 6: Set Up a Regular Negative Keyword Review Schedule

Adding negatives once doesn't fix your account permanently. New irrelevant searches appear constantly as Google's algorithms expand your reach and as search behavior evolves.

For high-spend campaigns (over $1,000/month), check your search terms report weekly. For medium-spend campaigns ($200-$1,000/month), bi-weekly works. For low-spend campaigns, monthly is sufficient.

Create a simple checklist you follow every review session:

Pull the search terms report for the period since your last review.

Sort by cost and identify the top 10 most expensive irrelevant queries.

Add those as negatives at the appropriate level (ad group, campaign, or shared list).

Sort by impressions and look for high-volume, zero-click terms dragging down your CTR.

Check for patterns rather than individual terms. If you see "free X," "free Y," "free Z," you don't need to add each one—just add "free" as a broad match negative.

Document your additions in a spreadsheet with columns for: date added, negative keyword, match type, level (ad group/campaign/shared list), reason for adding.

This documentation prevents duplicate work and helps you remember why you added certain negatives months later when you're second-guessing yourself. Understanding the difference between search terms vs keywords makes this analysis much more effective.

Set a calendar reminder with a link to your search terms report. Make it recurring. The advertisers who consistently outperform their competitors aren't smarter—they're just more disciplined about this routine maintenance.

Monitor for over-blocking occasionally. Every quarter, review your negative keyword lists and check if you're accidentally excluding legitimate traffic.

Pull a report of search terms that got zero impressions due to negative keywords. Google doesn't make this easy, but you can infer it by comparing keyword performance before and after adding negatives. If conversions dropped significantly after a negative keyword update, you might have over-blocked.

The mistake most agencies make is treating negative keywords as a one-time setup task. They spend an hour cleaning up the account during initial optimization, then never look at search terms again. Three months later, 30% of their budget is going to junk keywords that appeared after their initial cleanup.

In most accounts I audit, I find the highest ROI opportunities in the search terms report. Not in adding new keywords or adjusting bids—in blocking the garbage that's been bleeding budget for months.

Putting It All Together

Quick checklist before you close this tab: Pull your search terms report right now if you haven't in the past week. Identify your top 10 wasteful queries by cost. Add them as negatives at the appropriate level—ad group for specific exclusions, campaign for broader ones. Create at least one shared negative keyword list for universal junk terms. Set a calendar reminder to review search terms weekly.

The advertisers who consistently outperform their competitors aren't doing anything magical. They're just more disciplined about blocking irrelevant traffic.

Adding negative keywords in Google Ads takes minutes but saves thousands over time. Make it part of your regular optimization routine, and your cost-per-conversion will thank you.

Think of negative keywords as defense in basketball. It's not glamorous, it doesn't show up in highlight reels, but it's what separates winning teams from losing ones. You can have the best ad copy and landing pages in the world, but if you're showing ads to people searching for free alternatives, you're going to lose.

Start small if this feels overwhelming. Pick your highest-spend campaign and spend 15 minutes cleaning up its search terms today. Add the obvious negatives. Then do the same thing next week. Consistency beats perfection.

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