Negative Keywords Basics: A Plain Guide for Small Business Owners

Negative keywords are words you tell Google not to show your ads for. If you run a plumbing company and pay for ads on “plumber,” a negative keyword like “jobs” or “free” keeps your ad away from people looking for a job or a freebie, so you stop paying for clicks that were never going to become customers. This guide explains how they work, how to find them, how to add them, and the mistakes that cost small businesses money.

TL;DR

• A negative keyword is a word or phrase that blocks your Google ad from appearing when someone’s search includes it.
• The best source of ideas is your own search terms report, which lists the real searches that triggered your ads.
• Match types matter: a negative keyword does not automatically cover plurals or misspellings, so you add those yourself.
• Start small, review every week or two at first, and never add a word you have not checked against real searches.
• You can do this yourself, or hand it to someone who does it every week.

What negative keywords are and why they matter

When you run Google Ads, you choose keywords, which are the searches you want your ad to appear for. Google then shows your ad to people whose searches look like those keywords. “Look like” is the problem. Google’s matching is flexible, so your ad can show up for searches you never had in mind.

Negative keywords fix that. According to Google Ads Help, negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns so you can focus on the keywords that matter to your customers.

Here is the money side. You pay each time someone clicks your ad. A click from a person who wanted something you do not sell costs the same as a click from a ready buyer. Negative keywords are how you stop paying for the first kind.

If you have never run an ad campaign, think of it like a sign on a storefront. You want the sign to attract shoppers, not people asking for directions to a different store. Negative keywords narrow who sees the sign.

Negative keyword examples for local businesses

Google’s own example comes from an eyeglasses seller: an optometrist advertising eyeglasses could add “wine glasses” and “drinking glasses” as negatives, so the ad does not appear for people shopping for something to drink from (Google Ads Help). Another example from the marketing world: a premium shoe store might exclude “cheap shoes” and “second hand shoes” (Semrush).

Here is how the same idea looks for businesses in Metro Detroit:

Treat this table as a starting point only. Your customers are different, and the right list comes from your own data, not from a table.

Words that usually deserve a look

Some words show up on nearly every list because they signal a different intent:

• Job seekers: jobs, careers, hiring, salary, internship
• Learners: class, course, school, training, certification
• Bargain hunters: free, cheap, coupon (only if this does not fit your pricing)
• Do-it-yourselfers: DIY, how to, tutorial, kit
• Wrong place: a city or state you do not serve

Be careful with the “cheap” family. If you compete on low prices, those searchers may be your best customers. A negative keyword should reflect your business, not a generic rule.

How to find negative keywords in your own account

The most reliable way is to look at what people actually typed. Google calls this the search terms report. Google Ads Help explains that you can review it to spot irrelevant searches that triggered your ads, then add those directly to an ad group or campaign, or save them to a negative keyword list.

Here is the routine in plain steps:

1. Sign in to your Google Ads account and open the Insights and reports section, then the search terms report.
2. Set the date range to the last 30 days, or whatever period has real clicks.
3. Sort by cost, highest first. The searches that cost you the most are the ones to check first.
4. Read each search and ask: would someone typing this ever hire me?
5. For every search that is clearly a no, pick the single word or short phrase that makes it a no. That is your negative keyword.
6. Add it, choosing the level (more on that below) and a match type.

Spend your time on searches that cost money and produced no calls, form fills, or visits. A search that got one click and cost two dollars is not worth an hour of thought.

If you have not picked your main keywords yet, our guide on how to find the keywords your local customers search for will help you start from the right place. A good starting keyword list means fewer negatives later.

Check before you block

A search that looks odd can still come from a buyer. Before blocking a word, look at whether that kind of search ever produced a call or a form. If you are not sure, wait another week or two for more data. Adding a negative keyword is easy. Noticing that you blocked paying customers is not.

Match types: how exact the block is

This is where beginners get tripped up. A negative keyword has a match type, which controls how closely a search must resemble your negative word before the ad is blocked.

Three things from Google’s documentation are worth knowing:

• Broad is the default. With negative broad match, your ad is blocked when the search contains all of your negative terms, in any order. If only some of the terms appear, the ad may still show (Google Ads Help).
• Variations are not covered. Negative keywords do not match close variants, such as singular and plural forms, so you add those yourself (Google Ads Help). If you block “wine,” also add “wines” (Google Ads Help).
• You can pick tighter types. Phrase match and exact match let you block a specific phrase or an exact search rather than any search containing the words.

A simple rule for beginners: for single words that are never wanted, such as “jobs” for a business that is not hiring, use broad. For a phrase where one word alone could be fine but together they are wrong, use phrase or exact. For example, “repair” might be great for a repair shop, but “phone repair class” is not.

Ad group, campaign, list, or account: where to add them

You can add negative keywords at several levels:

• Ad group level: blocks the word for one group of ads only. Good when one service should not trigger another service’s ad.
• Campaign level: blocks the word across the whole campaign.
• Negative keyword list: a saved set of words you can apply to more than one campaign. Google says you can create a new list or use an existing one and apply it to multiple campaigns (Google Ads Help).
• Account level: applies to all eligible search and shopping ads. Google limits this to 1,000 terms (Google Ads Help).

For a small business with one or two campaigns, one shared negative keyword list covering job seekers, learners, and free-seekers is plenty. Keep it simple and keep it written down somewhere so you know why each word is there.

Google also suggests having at least three negative keywords in each ad group to filter out irrelevant searches (Google Ads Help). If you ever need to clean up, you can edit, remove, or download your list in bulk from the negative keywords section of your account (Google Ads Help).

A simple strategy that works for small budgets

A negative keyword strategy does not need to be complicated. Here is a practical order of operations:

1. Before launch: write a short starting list of obvious misfits, such as jobs, free, and training words, plus any service you do not offer.
2. First two weeks: check the search terms report every few days. Early on, Google is still testing what your ads should show for, so you see the most surprises.
3. First two months: review weekly, then every two weeks once things settle.
4. Ongoing: review monthly. New searches keep appearing, and so do new wasted clicks.
5. Keep notes: a one-line reason for each word makes later cleanups far easier.

This is not about reaching any particular result. It is about making sure the budget you set is spent on searches that match what you sell. If you are still deciding how much to spend at all, see our breakdown of what small business Google Ads actually cost and how a monthly budget gets set.

If you want to see which words your competitors and your own pages show up for over time, keyword tracking tools such as these keyword tracking and monitoring tools can help you watch how searches change, though they are built mainly for app listings.

Mistakes that block good customers

Blocking a word that is part of your own service. A tire shop that blocks “used” loses people who want used tires. Read your own service list against your negative list.

Forgetting plurals and spelling variants. Because negatives do not cover close variants, “job” does not automatically block “jobs” (Google Ads Help).

Using negative keywords to block your own business name. Google recommends brand exclusions instead of negative keywords if you want to avoid paying for clicks on your own brand, because exclusions handle misspellings and variants better (Google Ads Help). Our article on branded and non-branded keywords explains the difference in plain terms.

Over-blocking in automated campaigns. In Performance Max, Google’s automated campaign type, Google recommends negative keywords only for essential brand safety or searches that are completely irrelevant, since heavy use can hurt performance (Google Ads Help). You can read more in our Performance Max guide.

Adding words once and never looking again. People’s searches change by season and by news. A list written in January will miss what shows up in July.

Do negative keywords change your Quality Score?

Quality Score is a 1 to 10 rating Google gives your keywords as a guide to ad quality. Google breaks it into three parts: expected clickthrough rate (how likely people are to click your ad), ad relevance (how closely your ad matches what someone searched), and landing page experience (how useful your page is to the person who clicks) (Google Ads Help).

Negative keywords are not one of those three parts, so they do not change the score directly. But the three parts tie back to the same idea: showing the right ad to the right person. When your ad stops appearing for off-target searches, fewer people see it and ignore it. That is a likely help to your click rate over time, though Google does not promise any specific effect and neither do we.

The part you control most directly is the landing page, the page people reach after clicking. A slow or confusing page wastes the clicks you worked to attract. See our guide to fixing speed problems on Google Ads landing pages.

Our perspective

Most small business owners who come to us have already tried ads, or been told they should. The story is usually the same: money went out, a few odd calls came in, and nobody could explain why.

In our experience the answer is often unglamorous. The ad was showing for searches that had nothing to do with the business. A short, honest negative keyword list is one of the cheapest fixes there is, because it costs nothing but attention.

We also believe the click is only half the job. If the page someone lands on is slow, confusing, or does not match the ad, no keyword list will fix that. That is why we build websites and run ads together: a fast page with one clear next step, and ads that are pointed at the right searches.

We are owner operated, and we write our quotes at a fixed price so you know what you are paying before we start. We would rather explain what we are doing in plain words than hide behind jargon.

Eric Plotts

Want help with the page and the ads?

If this feels like a lot to manage next to running your business, we can help. Blue Lake Web Design is based in Novi, Michigan, owner operated by Eric Plotts since 2011, and we serve Metro Detroit and Oakland County. We build the website your ads send people to, starting at $899 for a three page website and $1,999 for eight pages, with a fixed quote for anything larger. We also manage Google Ads for small businesses.

Looking at web design first? See our website pricing and web design services, or call us at (248) 800-1855. For more plain-language guides, browse our web design and SEO articles.

FAQ

What are negative keywords in simple terms?

They are words you add to your Google Ads account so your ads do not appear when someone’s search includes them. If you sell new cars, “used” could be one. They help you avoid paying for clicks from people who are not looking for what you offer.

How many negative keywords do I need?

There is no magic number. Google recommends at least three in each ad group (Google Ads Help), and most small accounts grow their list steadily as they review real searches. Quality matters more than quantity, so add a word only when you have seen it cause irrelevant clicks.

Can negative keywords hurt my ads?

Yes, if you block a word your real customers use. Check the search terms report for calls or form fills before adding a word, and add one change at a time. If a block turns out to be wrong, you can remove it from your negative keywords section at any time.

How often should I check my negative keywords?

Check every few days during the first couple of weeks, then weekly, then monthly once your list settles. Searches change with seasons, news, and new competitors, so a regular look keeps the list current.

Do I need a website before I run ads?

Yes. Ads send people to a page, and that page needs to load quickly and make the next step obvious. If you need one, we build them for small businesses at fixed prices, and you can call (248) 800-1855 to talk it through.

Recommended

• How to Find the Keywords Your Local Customers Search For
• What Are Branded and Non-Branded Keywords?
• 10× Customer Value and a 60–90 Day Test for Small Business Google Ads