Your Ultimate List of Negative Keywords for PPC in 2025

Ever feel like your Google Ads budget is just… evaporating? You’re not alone. One of the biggest culprits is often invisible: showing your ads to the wrong people, for the wrong searches. The solution isn’t a bigger budget; it’s smarter filtering. That's where a powerful list of negative keywords comes into play.

Think of it as your campaign's bouncer, politely turning away unqualified traffic before it costs you a single click. This isn't just about saving a few bucks on wasted impressions. It’s about fundamentally improving your return on investment (ROI), boosting conversion rates, and making sure your message reaches people who actually want what you're selling. A well-maintained negative keyword list is a core component of successful campaign management. For a comprehensive approach to managing your PPC campaigns, consider exploring these ten tips for Google AdWords, where negative keywords play a vital role in optimizing your ad spend.

Wasting money on irrelevant searches for "jobs," "free," "DIY," or competitor brand names can drain your budget fast. These clicks rarely, if ever, convert into paying customers. By proactively blocking these terms, you protect your ad spend and focus it exclusively on high-intent searchers. We’ve compiled the ultimate cheat sheet with categorized, copy-and-paste-ready lists to stop the bleed. Let's dive in and start plugging the leaks in your ad campaigns for good.

1. Competitor Brand Names

One of the quickest ways to drain a PPC budget is by paying for clicks from users who are explicitly looking for your competition. Adding competitor brand names to your list of negative keywords is a foundational, non-negotiable step to protect your ad spend and improve targeting. This strategy ensures your ads are shown to users genuinely interested in your products or services, not those already loyal to or comparing a direct rival.

Think about it: if you sell premium running shoes and someone searches for "Nike Pegasus review," they are deep in the consideration phase for a specific competitor's product. While you could try to sway them, it's often an expensive, low-conversion battle. By excluding "Nike," you reserve your budget for searchers with higher purchase intent for what you offer.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding competitor brand names immediately refines your audience, leading to higher-quality traffic and a better return on ad spend (ROAS). Users searching for competitors have already signaled their interest elsewhere. Intercepting them can result in high bounce rates and wasted clicks that damage your Quality Score over time.

For example, if Coca-Cola bids on the keyword "soda" but adds "Pepsi" as a negative keyword, their ads won't show for the search query "buy Pepsi soda." This simple exclusion saves them from spending money on a click that is highly unlikely to convert.

How to Implement It Effectively

Getting started is simple, but precision is key for maximum impact. Follow these steps to build a robust competitor exclusion list:

• Identify Your Rivals: Create a list of your top 5-10 direct competitors. Include both established giants and emerging players in your market.
• Include Variations: Add common misspellings, abbreviations, and product-specific names associated with each competitor. For instance, if you compete with HubSpot, you might exclude hubspot, hub spot, and hubspot crm.
• Choose the Right Match Type: Use broad match for competitor brand names to block any query containing that name. For example, adding -competitor as a broad match negative will block "competitor reviews," "competitor pricing," and "best competitor alternatives."
• Apply at the Campaign Level: For most businesses, it makes sense to create a shared negative keyword list with competitor names and apply it to all relevant search campaigns to ensure consistent protection.

Pro Tip: While excluding competitors is usually a best practice, there are advanced strategies for "conquesting" or bidding on their terms. This approach requires a separate, carefully managed campaign with a dedicated budget and tailored ad copy. For a deeper dive into this tactic, explore the pros and cons of targeting competitor keywords. Learn more about competitor PPC keyword strategies on keywordme.io.

2. Irrelevant Product/Service Categories

One of the most common ways to waste ad spend is showing up for searches that are adjacent to your business but entirely irrelevant to what you actually sell. Adding irrelevant product or service categories to your list of negative keywords is a critical move to filter out unqualified traffic and focus your budget on users with precise intent. This strategy ensures you only pay for clicks from people looking for your specific offerings.

Imagine you own a boutique specializing in high-end wedding dresses. A user searches for "summer dresses," and your ad appears. While related to "dresses," their intent is completely different. By excluding terms like "casual dresses," "summer dresses," and "children's clothing," you prevent this budget leakage and reserve your ad spend for queries like "lace bridal gowns" or "designer wedding dresses," which signal a much higher likelihood of conversion.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding unrelated categories sharpens your audience targeting, resulting in more relevant clicks, higher conversion rates, and a healthier return on ad spend (ROAS). When your ads appear for searches that don't match your inventory, you attract window shoppers who will quickly bounce, signaling to Google that your landing page isn't relevant. This can harm your Quality Score and increase your cost per click over time.

For instance, a B2B SaaS company that sells enterprise project management software would add negatives like "free," "freemium," and "open source." This prevents their ads from showing to users searching for "free project management tools," a segment that does not align with their premium, paid business model. This simple exclusion protects their budget for high-value enterprise leads.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building this list requires a clear understanding of what you don't offer. Precision is essential for carving out the right audience without accidentally blocking potential customers.

• Map Your Offerings: Start by creating a definitive list of all the product or service categories you currently offer. This creates a clear boundary.
• Identify Near-Misses: Brainstorm categories that are related but distinct from your inventory. Use your Search Terms Report in Google Ads to find real-world examples of irrelevant queries that have triggered your ads.
• Use Broad and Phrase Match: Use broad match negatives for entire categories you don't serve (e.g., -sportswear). Use phrase match for more specific exclusions where word order matters (e.g., -"car rentals" if you only sell cars).
• Organize by Theme: Create separate shared negative lists for different themes (e.g., "Non-Luxury Items," "DIY Solutions") and apply them to the relevant campaigns. This keeps your account organized and scalable.

Pro Tip: Your product and service lines will evolve. Schedule a quarterly review of your negative keyword lists to ensure they still align with your business offerings. Remove any negatives that now conflict with new products you’ve launched to avoid blocking relevant traffic.

3. Low Purchase Intent Keywords

Not every search query is created equal, and paying for clicks from users who are just browsing or researching is a fast way to exhaust your advertising budget. Adding low purchase intent keywords to your list of negative keywords helps you filter out informational traffic, focusing your spend on users who are actively looking to buy. This strategy is critical for maximizing your return on investment (ROI) by connecting your ads with commercially-oriented searches.

Think of it this way: if you sell premium project management software, a user searching for "free project management template" is looking for a DIY solution, not a paid subscription. Their intent is to learn or get something for free, not to purchase. By excluding terms like "free," "template," and "example," you ensure your ads are shown to users with a higher probability of converting into paying customers.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding informational and non-commercial keywords immediately boosts the quality of your traffic. It prevents budget waste on clicks from students, researchers, or DIY enthusiasts who have no intention of making a purchase. This leads to a lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) and a higher return on ad spend (ROAS) because every dollar is spent targeting users further down the sales funnel.

For instance, an e-commerce store selling hiking boots should add "how to" and "reviews" as negative keywords. This prevents their product ads from appearing for searches like "how to clean hiking boots" or "best hiking boot reviews 2022," saving their budget for transactional queries like "buy waterproof hiking boots online."

How to Implement It Effectively

Building a list of low-intent negatives requires understanding the language of different search stages. Use these steps to filter out tire-kickers and attract ready-to-buy customers:

• Identify Intent Modifiers: Brainstorm words that signal research or non-commercial interest. Common culprits include free, how to, what is, tutorial, guide, example, template, and reviews.
• Analyze Your Search Term Report: Regularly review your search term reports in Google Ads to find real-world queries that are driving low-quality traffic and add them to your negative list.
• Use Phrase Match for Precision: For modifiers like "how to," using phrase match (-"how to") is often more effective than broad match. This blocks queries like "how to fix my shoes" but might still allow a valuable query like "shoes that show how to run better."
• Segment by Funnel Stage: If you have informational content like blog posts or guides, consider running separate campaigns for them. This allows you to exclude informational keywords from your product-focused campaigns without losing out on top-of-funnel traffic entirely.

Pro Tip: Your search for high-intent queries doesn't stop with negatives. Actively seek out long-tail keywords that signal strong purchase intent. These longer, more specific phrases often have lower competition and higher conversion rates. For a full guide, learn more about finding valuable long-tail keywords on keywordme.io.

4. Geographic/Location Irrelevance

Few things waste ad spend faster than paying for clicks from users in locations you don't serve. Adding geographically irrelevant terms to your list of negative keywords is crucial for any business with a defined service area, whether it's a local plumber or a national e-commerce store that only ships to specific countries. This strategy stops your ads from appearing in searches that are geographically unqualified from the start.

For instance, if your plumbing company exclusively serves San Diego, you don't want to pay for a click from someone searching "plumber in Los Angeles." By excluding cities, states, or countries outside your operational footprint, you ensure your budget is spent on reaching local, high-intent customers who can actually hire you. This simple filtering mechanism is fundamental to achieving a positive return on local ad campaigns.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding irrelevant locations protects your budget from clicks with zero conversion potential. It sharpens your ad targeting, leading to a higher concentration of qualified leads and a much healthier return on ad spend (ROAS). This is especially critical for service-based businesses, brick-and-mortar stores, and companies with specific shipping zones.

For example, a restaurant chain with locations only in Texas should add negative keywords like "California," "Florida," and "New York." This prevents them from appearing in a search like "best barbecue ribs in New York," saving them from paying for a click from a user they can't serve. This is a foundational layer of targeting that works alongside your campaign's location settings.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building a comprehensive location exclusion list requires thinking like a user from outside your service area. Follow these steps to lock down your geographic targeting:

• Define Your Service Area: Clearly list all the cities, states, provinces, and countries you do not serve. This will be the foundation of your negative list.
• Include Location Modifiers: Add common geographic search terms like city names, state abbreviations, country names, and even continents. For a US-only business, you would exclude Canada, UK, Europe, and international shipping.
• Consider Service-Type Modifiers: If you don't offer remote services, exclude terms like remote, online, virtual, and nationwide. This prevents mismatches in service delivery expectations.
• Apply at the Correct Level: Create a shared negative keyword list of major geographic exclusions (like countries) and apply it at the account or campaign level. For more granular exclusions (like specific non-service neighborhoods), apply them at the ad group level.

Pro Tip: Your Google Ads location targeting settings are your first line of defense, but they don't block users who are physically in your target area but searching for services elsewhere. Combining precise location targeting with a robust geographic negative keyword list creates a powerful, two-layer filter to ensure maximum budget efficiency.

5. Price-Sensitive/Discount-Seeking Keywords

If you're marketing a premium product or service, attracting users looking for a rock-bottom price is a surefire way to burn through your ad budget with zero return. Adding price-sensitive and discount-seeking terms to your list of negative keywords helps you filter out traffic that is fundamentally misaligned with your brand’s value proposition and pricing structure. This ensures your ads are served to customers willing to pay for quality, not just bargain hunters.

Imagine you sell high-end, bespoke leather goods. A user searching for "cheap leather wallet" or "free shipping wallets" is not your target audience. Their primary purchase driver is price, not craftsmanship or material quality. Excluding terms like cheap, free, and discount protects your brand positioning and focuses your spend on searchers who appreciate the value you offer.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding budget-focused keywords is critical for maintaining healthy profit margins and brand integrity. Clicks from these queries rarely convert for premium offerings and can lead to high bounce rates, signaling to Google that your landing page isn't relevant to the searcher. This can negatively impact your Quality Score and increase your cost-per-click over time.

For example, a luxury SaaS platform that excludes keywords like "free trial," "cheapest," and "lowest price" avoids spending money on users who are not in the market for an enterprise-level solution. This simple filtration directs their budget toward leads who understand the investment required for a premium tool.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building a comprehensive list of price-sensitive terms is an ongoing process, but you can start with a strong foundation. Follow these steps to protect your campaigns from low-intent, budget-conscious traffic:

• Brainstorm Core Terms: Start with the most common discount-related words. Think cheap, free, discount, coupon, bargain, affordable, clearance, sale, and lowest price.
• Include Action and Comparison Words: Expand your list to include terms like deal, voucher, outlet, overstock, liquidation, and even comparison terms like vs if your goal is to avoid direct price comparisons.
• Use Broad Match Negatives: Apply these terms as broad match negatives to capture a wide range of irrelevant queries. Adding -free will block searches like "free software trial" and "software with free shipping."
• Create a Shared List: Compile all your price-sensitive terms into a single negative keyword list and apply it across all campaigns where you want to maintain a premium positioning.

Pro Tip: While excluding these terms is vital for premium brands, you might run seasonal promotions or have specific entry-level products. In these cases, create separate campaigns or ad groups for those offers without this negative list applied. This allows you to capture discount-seeking traffic strategically without compromising your core campaigns. Get more advanced ideas by exploring a comprehensive negative keyword list on keywordme.io.

6. Job/Career-Related Keywords

Unless you're actively recruiting, one of the most common ways to waste ad spend, especially for well-known B2B brands, is by showing ads to job seekers. Adding career-related terms to your list of negative keywords is a crucial step to filter out non-commercial intent and focus your budget on attracting actual customers, not potential employees. This strategy ensures your marketing dollars are spent on leads, not résumés.

Imagine you're a software company promoting your new project management tool. A user searches for "[Your Company Name] careers" or "[Your Product] developer jobs." Without negative keywords, your ad could appear, leading to a costly click from someone interested in employment, not a product demo. Excluding terms like jobs, hiring, and careers prevents this mismatch, directing your ads only to users with commercial intent.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding job-related keywords is essential for maintaining a high-quality lead funnel and improving your return on ad spend (ROAS). Clicks from job seekers almost never convert into sales, leading to inflated costs, skewed conversion data, and a lower Quality Score due to high bounce rates. This is especially critical for branded campaigns where your company name is a magnet for career inquiries.

For example, if a tech company like Salesforce adds employment as a negative keyword, their ads for "Salesforce CRM solutions" won't be triggered by the query "Salesforce employment opportunities." This simple exclusion protects their ad spend from being wasted on irrelevant, non-customer traffic.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building this list is straightforward but vital for any established brand or company that is actively hiring. Follow these steps to clean your traffic:

• Brainstorm Core Terms: Start with the most obvious keywords: jobs, careers, hiring, employment, internship, recruiting, and positions.
• Include Action-Oriented Queries: Add phrases that signal a job search, such as apply now, work for us, we're hiring, and job opening.
• Use Phrase and Broad Match: Use phrase match for specific queries like "work for us" to maintain control. For single-word terms like jobs or careers, a broad match negative is often effective at catching long-tail variations.
• Apply to a Shared List: Create a "Career/HR" negative keyword list and apply it at the campaign or account level. This ensures all your campaigns are protected from job-seeking traffic, especially your brand-focused ones.

Pro Tip: Regularly review your search terms report, particularly for your branded campaigns. Job seekers often use creative queries, and you might discover new terms to add to your negative list. Look for patterns like "[Your Company] salary" or "[Your Company] reviews employee" and exclude them to keep your targeting sharp.

7. Adult/Offensive Content Keywords

Protecting your brand's reputation is paramount, and one of the biggest threats in PPC is having your ads appear alongside inappropriate or offensive content. Adding a comprehensive list of negative keywords that covers adult, explicit, and offensive themes is a critical brand safety measure. This strategy prevents your ads from being triggered by searches that are irrelevant, damaging, or completely misaligned with your company's values.

Imagine you're a family-friendly toy company. You bid on "dolls," but without proper exclusions, your ad could show up for a search like "adult dolls." This association is not just a wasted click; it can cause irreparable harm to your brand image. By proactively excluding terms related to mature or offensive content, you ensure your ads are only seen by your intended audience in a brand-safe environment.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Implementing a brand safety negative list is non-negotiable for maintaining a positive public image and complying with platform policies. It filters out low-quality, irrelevant traffic from users whose intent is far from commercial. These clicks often have a 100% bounce rate and can signal to Google that your ads are not relevant, potentially harming your Quality Score.

For instance, a healthcare provider advertising "women's health services" would want to add explicit sexual terms as negative keywords. This prevents their compassionate, clinical ads from appearing in searches for adult entertainment, preserving their professional reputation and focusing ad spend on genuine patient inquiries.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building a robust brand safety list requires a proactive and ongoing approach. Here’s how to get started and maintain it:

• Brainstorm Core Categories: Create lists for different types of undesirable content, including adult and sexually explicit terms, profanity and hate speech, illegal activities, and politically charged or sensitive topics.
• Include Variations and Misspellings: Users often misspell explicit words to bypass filters. Include common variations, slang, and phonetic spellings to create a more comprehensive blocklist.
• Utilize Platform Tools: Leverage Google Ads' built-in content exclusions and brand safety settings, which can block entire categories of sites and apps in addition to your keyword list.
• Apply Universally: This is a perfect candidate for a shared negative keyword list. Apply it at the account or campaign level to ensure all your advertising efforts are protected consistently.

Pro Tip: Brand safety is not a one-time setup. Language evolves, and new offensive terms emerge. Regularly review your search term reports for unexpected queries that slip through and schedule quarterly reviews of your list with your legal or compliance team to keep it current and effective.

8. Competitor-Owned Keywords and Trademarked Terms

Beyond just excluding competitor brand names, a sophisticated negative keyword strategy involves blocking their trademarked terms and proprietary product names. This prevents you from inadvertently bidding on legally protected keywords, which can lead to ad disapprovals, account suspensions, and even costly legal disputes. Adding these terms to your list of negative keywords is a crucial compliance step, especially for enterprise-level advertisers.

Think of it this way: if you're a cloud provider, bidding on "Amazon Web Services" is one thing, but bidding on "AWS Lambda" or "Amazon S3" enters a different territory. These are specific, trademarked service names. Showing your ad for these queries is not only a waste of money on users looking for a specific competitor's solution but also a potential violation of Google's ad policies and intellectual property laws.

Why This Is a Must-Have Negative List

Excluding competitor trademarks and proprietary terms is a defensive maneuver that protects your brand's reputation and legal standing. It keeps your campaigns clean from a policy perspective and ensures you aren't spending money on clicks from users with zero intent to purchase from you. This level of precision targeting helps maintain a high Quality Score by avoiding irrelevant ad impressions and clicks.

For example, a software company competing with Microsoft would add "Office 365," "Azure," and "Windows" as negative keywords. This prevents their ads from appearing on searches like "Office 365 subscription help," which are clearly from users already embedded in a competitor's ecosystem and highly unlikely to switch.

How to Implement It Effectively

Building a trademark exclusion list requires diligence and sometimes legal consultation. Follow these steps to safeguard your campaigns:

• Audit Competitor IP: Research your main competitors and list their key trademarked products, services, and proprietary feature names. Look for terms with ™ or ® symbols.
• Consult Legal Counsel: For larger organizations, work with your legal team to compile an official and comprehensive list of protected terms you should avoid in your advertising.
• Use Exact and Phrase Match: For specific trademarked terms like "iCloud" or "Siri," use exact match [-icloud] or phrase match "-siri feature" to block only those precise queries without accidentally excluding broader, non-trademarked searches.
• Create a Shared "Legal Compliance" List: Group all these protected terms into a single shared negative keyword list and apply it across all relevant campaigns at the account or campaign level for consistent enforcement.

Pro Tip: Google's trademark policy can be complex and varies by region. Regularly review the official Google Ads Trademark policy to stay updated. Documenting your efforts to exclude these terms can also be beneficial in the event of an account audit or policy flag.

8-Point Negative Keywords Comparison

Automate Your Way to a Perfect Negative Keyword List

Whew, that was a lot to cover! We've navigated the entire landscape of negative keywords, from broad strokes like blocking irrelevant industries and job seekers to the finer details of excluding specific competitor brand names and discount hunters. You now have a comprehensive playbook and a robust list of negative keywords ready to copy, paste, and customize for your Google Ads campaigns.

The core takeaway is simple: negative keywords are not a "set it and forget it" task. They are your primary tool for sculpting traffic, defending your budget, and ensuring every dollar you spend has the highest possible chance of converting. A sloppy or neglected negative keyword list is like leaving the back door of your shop wide open; you’ll get a ton of foot traffic, but most of it will be people looking for the bathroom, not to buy what you’re selling.

Your Path to PPC Mastery: Key Takeaways

Let's distill everything down to the most critical action items. If you remember nothing else, remember these points:

• Be Proactive, Not Just Reactive: Don't wait for your search term report to fill up with junk before you act. Use the starter lists we provided to build a foundational defense from day one. Block obvious waste like "free," "jobs," and "how to" right out of the gate.
• Structure is Everything: Your negative keyword strategy's power multiplies when you apply lists at the right level. Use account-level lists for universal negatives (like adult content or career terms), campaign-level lists for broad category exclusions, and ad group-level lists for surgical precision (like blocking a competitor's specific product model).
• Match Types Matter, A Lot: Remember the difference. A broad match negative (free) is a blunt instrument, while a phrase match ("free trial") is a scalpel, and an exact match ([free quote generator]) is a laser. Using the right match type prevents you from accidentally blocking high-value, long-tail queries.

The Real Secret to Winning? Stop Doing It Manually.

Here’s the hard truth: Manually managing a list of negative keywords is a battle you will eventually lose. As your campaigns scale, the volume of search term data becomes overwhelming. Sifting through spreadsheets, identifying patterns, and updating lists across dozens of campaigns is a massive time-sink and incredibly prone to human error. You miss things. You get tired. You spend hours on a task that an algorithm can do better and faster.

This is where the professionals separate themselves from the amateurs. They stop wasting time on tedious, repetitive work and focus on high-level strategy, creative testing, and scaling what works. The secret isn't working harder; it's working smarter by leveraging automation.

Key Insight: The goal isn't just to have a good negative keyword list. The goal is to have a system that maintains and improves that list for you, freeing up your time to focus on strategy and growth.

Instead of drowning in search term reports, you can let a dedicated tool handle the heavy lifting. Smart platforms can analyze your data, spot wasteful keywords you might miss, suggest additions with the correct match type, and help you apply them with a single click. This transforms a reactive, manual chore into a proactive, automated system that continuously optimizes your ad spend and protects your ROI 24/7. It's the difference between bailing water with a bucket and plugging the leak for good.

Ready to stop wasting time in spreadsheets and start optimizing like a pro? Keywordme is built to automate the entire process of finding and managing your list of negative keywords, turning hours of manual work into just a few clicks. See for yourself how easy it is to clean up your ad spend and boost your ROI at Keywordme.