When you invest in Google Ads, every click should have a reasonable chance of becoming a customer. That becomes difficult when your ads appear for searches from people who are looking for something you do not sell, cannot provide, or are unlikely to buy.
This is where negative keywords become important. Negative keywords allow you to exclude searches that are irrelevant to your business, helping your ads focus on searches that are more closely aligned with your products or services.
Google itself recommends using the Search terms report to identify searches that are not relevant enough and adding them as negative keywords where appropriate.
At Netplanet Digital, we know that managing Google Ads involves much more than choosing a list of keywords and setting a budget. Search behaviour changes, campaigns gather new data, and the types of searches triggering your ads can reveal opportunities as well as wasted spend.
What Exactly Are Negative Keywords in Google Ads?
Negative keywords are keywords that prevent your Google Ads from appearing for searches that are irrelevant to your business.
For example, an office furniture company may want to appear for searches such as “commercial office furniture” but not “free office furniture”, “office furniture jobs” or “DIY office furniture”.
Reviewing these searches regularly helps you identify terms that are using your budget without reaching the customers you want. Adding appropriate negative keywords helps separate those audiences.
Google currently supports broad, phrase, and exact negative keyword match types for Search campaigns. These work differently from the corresponding positive keyword match types, so negative keywords need to be added carefully.
The important point is that you should not automatically exclude anything that does not produce an immediate sale. The purpose of the review is to understand the intent behind the search and decide whether it belongs in your campaign.
Why Can Negative Keywords Reduce Wasted Google Ads Spend?
Google Ads does not simply match your advertisement to the exact phrase you typed into the campaign.
Google explains that keyword matching can allow ads to appear for searches that are related to the meaning and intent of the keyword. Broad matches can reach a wider range of searches than phrases or exact matches.
That flexibility can help advertisers reach new potential customers, but it also makes search-term monitoring important.
Suppose you advertise commercial cleaning services. A keyword around “office cleaning” could potentially attract searches from people looking for cleaning jobs, training courses, cleaning equipment, or ways to clean an office themselves.
A click from one of those searches may still cost money even though the person has no intention of hiring your business.
Negative keywords give you a way to tell Google that certain searches are outside the audience you want. Here’s a simple example. Imagine a campaign receives the following searches:
| Search term | Relevance to a commercial cleaning company | Potential action |
|---|---|---|
| commercial office cleaning | High | Keep |
| office cleaning company | High | Keep |
| office cleaning jobs | Low | Consider excluding job-related terms |
| office cleaning course | Low | Consider excluding course-related terms |
| DIY office cleaning | Low | Consider excluding DIY-related terms |
| office cleaning services Sydney | High | Keep |
The objective is not to make the campaign appear for fewer searches simply for the sake of reducing traffic.
The objective is to spend more of your budget on searches that have a genuine connection to the business.
Google specifically states that adding irrelevant search terms as negative keywords can prevent ads from showing to people looking for something you do not sell.
How Often Should You Review Negative Keywords in Google Ads?
For many businesses, reviewing search terms every two weeks or once a month is a sensible starting point.
The right frequency depends on the amount of traffic and spend in the account.
A campaign receiving a high volume of clicks can generate useful search-term data much faster than a small campaign with limited traffic. Waiting several months before reviewing that information can allow irrelevant searches to continue appearing for longer than necessary.
A simple review schedule could look like this.
- Every two weeks for higher-spend or higher-volume campaigns
- Once a month for lower-volume campaigns
- After launching a new campaign when sufficient search data becomes available
- After introducing a new product or service
- After changing your target audience or location
- When lead quality suddenly declines
Regular reviews should also work both ways. A search term that looks irrelevant at first may turn out to be valuable once you understand the customer’s intent.
That is why negative keyword management should involve judgement rather than simply creating a very large exclusion list.
What Should You Look For During a Negative Keyword Review?
Start with the search terms report in Google Ads. Google describes this report as a way to understand the searches that triggered your advertisements and use those insights to refine your keywords.
From there, look for patterns rather than isolated searches.
Review industry-specific search terms
Every industry has terminology that can create confusing overlaps.
A word can have several meanings, while a product name can also be used by another industry. Search terms that look highly relevant at first glance may therefore deserve closer inspection.
Ask whether the person behind the search could realistically become a customer.
Identify services or products you do not provide
If you offer one type of service but not another, searches for the service you do not provide may need to be excluded.
For example, a business specialising in residential solar installation may not want to spend its advertising budget attracting searches for commercial solar installation if that work is outside its target market.
The same principle applies to products.
Look for low-quality lead patterns
Clicks are not the same as customers.
A campaign can generate enquiries while still producing a high proportion of leads that your sales team cannot use. Search-term reviews can help identify whether particular types of searches are contributing to that problem.
Consider the language used by people who submit poor-quality enquiries and compare it with the searches producing strong customers. That comparison can reveal useful negative keyword opportunities.
Check terms relating to jobs, courses, free resources and DIY searches
Depending on the business, searches involving terms such as jobs, careers, courses, training, free, template or DIY may represent people who want something different from the service being advertised.
They should not automatically become negative keywords. Review the intent first.
For some businesses, these audiences may be valuable. For others, they may represent substantial wasted traffic.
How Can Netplanet Digital Help With Google Ads?
Negative keyword management works best when data and business knowledge are considered together.
A leading digital agency near you can identify which searches are receiving clicks, which terms are appearing frequently, and which searches may be associated with weaker performance. You can then add the commercial context that the account data cannot provide on its own.
At Netplanet Digital, our paid advertising services are built around targeted campaigns and ongoing optimisation, with Google Ads forming part of a broader digital marketing strategy.
Our team can review search behaviour, campaign performance and targeting while also working with you to understand what a valuable customer looks like for your business.
That collaboration is particularly important when lead quality matters as much as lead volume.
If you want to improve the quality of your Google Ads traffic and build a campaign around the customers you actually want, speak with the Netplanet Digital team about your paid advertising strategy.
FAQs
Reading Time: 5 minutesYou can, yes. The Search Terms report inside Google Ads shows you exactly what people typed before clicking your ad, and you can add exclusions from there.
That said, your agency can help you make sense of the data and decide which terms are actually worth cutting based on how the campaign is performing overall.
Reading Time: 5 minutesThey can. Excluding searches that have no value to your business means you are less likely to pay for clicks from people who were never looking for what you offer.
Reading Time: 5 minutesA fortnightly or monthly review is a good starting point. If your campaign receives a lot of traffic, checking the search terms more often may be worthwhile.
