Use Negative Keywords to Avoid Unnecessary Click Costs

One of the major advantages of Google Ads is that you can target your advertising to people who are most likely looking for exactly what you offer, maximizing the return on your investment. To advertise on Google, you use relevant keywords that you believe potential customers are searching for.

To avoid missing out on searches similar to your keyword, or search phrases that combine your keyword with other terms, advertisers sometimes use broad match keywords in combination with exact match. However, when using broad match keywords, you may capture searches that aren’t relevant, and this can be prevented with the help of negative keywords.

What is search intent?

To understand what users are looking for and what their intention behind a search is, you can use the search terms report. There you’ll find plenty of interesting and useful data; for example, you can see how many clicks a particular search phrase has received and how many of those clicks led to conversions. This also allows you to filter out searches that cost a lot but don’t seem relevant to your business. Often, these are informational searches—for instance, if you sell balloons, broad keywords might trigger ads on searches like “how to blow up a balloon.” Naturally, you want to exclude these searches since the user is not likely looking to buy a balloon, and you don’t want to pay for that click unnecessarily. Another example of using negative keywords is if you sell solid-colored balloons but not patterned ones, you should exclude searches like “patterned balloons,” “animal print balloons,” or “polka dot balloons.”

Negative keyword lists

Something useful to know is that you can also create negative keyword lists that can be applied across different campaigns, instead of adding every negative keyword at the account, campaign, or ad group level. You can add or remove negative keyword lists from campaigns whenever you want, meaning you can reuse the same list in several campaigns, which saves you time.

Don’t overuse negative keywords

It’s important not to go overboard with negative keywords. If you exclude too many terms, your ads may stop showing for people who might actually be interested in your products. Therefore, carefully select the negative keywords that are truly not beneficial for your business.

Review the search terms report regularly

One last thing to keep in mind when working with negative keywords is that even if you exclude one word, your ads may still be triggered by similar search terms. That’s why it’s a good idea to regularly analyze the search terms report to see if new irrelevant searches appear that should also be excluded.