Google Ads Negative Keywords: The RIGHT Way to Find and Add Negatives | Step-by-Step Tutorial

This is Austin from Grow My Ads and in today's video I am going to give you a complete breakdown on negative keywords. Negative keywords are one of my favorite features of Google Ads because I can stop Google from taking my money on irrelevant clicks by adding negative keywords. So I'm going to share what they are best ways of doing negative keyword research and finding negative keywords. The best way of adding negative keywords and then also a couple tips in regards to making sure you don't add negative keywords in a way that would impact your account negatively. As well as match types of negative keywords. They differ from positive keywords match types. So I'm going to give you a complete breakdown of the match types and what match types you should be adding negative keywords to your account. Let's dive in. First, what are negative keywords? Simply put, and this is on Google support page. I will have this in the description below. Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. I like this because Google's really good at showing your ads for irrelevant terms and that is a waste of money, right? So negative keywords give you a bit control back to your ads. Even though Google continues to try to take control away. Thankfully negative keywords still exist. So so if you find that your ads are firing for irrelevant searches, you're able to actually add those keywords as a negative keyword to prevent your ad from showing for those searches in the future. So types of negative keywords could be any type of irrelevant search could be out of area. Let's say you are a painting company in Miami and someone is searching painting companies New York City. Obviously you don't service New York City. So out of area New York City you would want to add as a negative keyword. In that example, products maybe that you don't sell that somehow are firing for your ads as well as just simply irrelevant searches. You see things like used products, Craigslist, ebay, I could go on and on, right? So any of those terms that would suck money away from you, not make you money, those are negative keywords that you would want to add. And I'm going to share how to add those here in a second. Okay, I'm inside of an account, actual ad group here and this account does live off of quite a bit, or at least this ad group lives off a broad match. Broad match can be good, right? If you have it dialed in setting your goal, but it does produce a lot of Irrelevant searches as well. So how would I go about finding negative keywords? Well, in this case I'm simply just going to go to the search term report and this is going to fire or pull all of the search terms people actually searched that triggered clicks and impressions to our ad. So on an account like this you can just manually sort of go through your search query report and do a quick browse and you'll be able to find terms that don't look good. So in this case I'm just going to quickly go through. Most of these are pretty good. Okay, so here's a term right here. Col Cade's roofing. This would be a competitor term. Now here's all all I simply do when I'm doing a search query report for negative keywords I just have a tab open. We'll call this negatives for now and then competitor. Right. So boom. Now I'll talk a bit later in regards to the match types that I'll add but let's go ahead and just find a few more foreign. Scan of the search query report, I was able to find several terms here that we don't want. So we have cost to wash roof, how to wash roof, pressure wash roof. Then we have competitors Col kids roofing, Smart choice roofing, five star roofing. And then we had an out of area a Sydney. This account is in Australia but it is not in the city of Sydney. So Sydney would be out of area. We don't want to fire any ads for Sydney. Another great way of finding negative keywords is actually using the keyword planner tool. We have a video on keyword research where I go pretty in depth into the keyword planner tool. So if you want to know more about the keyword planner tool, go check that video out and I will have that in the description below. However, for negative keyword research, I use the keyword research tool as well. And instead of trying to find keywords I actually want to target here, I'm now trying to find keywords I would want to add to my negative keyword list. So this is a good exercise to do on brand new campaigns, brand new accounts. But this is something as an SOP that we do here at grow my ads for most of our clients like on a monthly basis we will actually do negative keyword research. So not just positive keyword research, like how can we continue to expand and grow the account. But hey, are there terms out there that we should have added to the negative keyword list that we just don't have added yet? So this is an ongoing task that you should be doing. So in here, this will give you, you know, roof restoration terms. I'm in the city of Melbourne, so for Australia this is where we're targeting and I can simply just kind of go through here and then find terms that might not make sense for us just manually sort of going through here. Right. But another thing is you can use this refine keywords tool here and then this will give you some ideas as well. So you see how there's brand or non brand. So if I take non brands out and then let me do so these are. Yeah, these are all brands and I'm going to take service out for now. I'm also going to take material and then I'm going to take others. So now check this out. I basically have a list of a bunch of roofing brands or actual roofing companies. So frontline roofing and restoration, this would be a competitor. So I'm going to add that there. Here's another competitor, add that there. So I could go through all of these and then, I mean there's 196 in this list. Most of these are going to be competitor terms. This is great. Now you might ask, why add competitor terms? Competitor terms can work. However, we normally like to have a competitor campaign where we know the competitor terms are only firing. In a competitor campaign, I can control the messaging with the ads and I have more granular insight into the performance of that campaign. The thing with competitor terms is in a lot of accounts that I've audited, they may look like they actually perform well. But then if you go deeper and look at the call quality, a lot of times it's phone call conversions that are fine. On competitor names or lead quality, what you find is they're actually junk. They didn't mean to actually contact you. They thought they truly were contacting the competitor name that they searched in Google. So, so am I saying competitor terms don't work? No, they do work. And in fact we have clients that make really good money from competitor terms. I have a full video on a strategy that we use to make money from our competitor terms. I will have that in the description below. But in most cases it is great to have a competitor negative keyword list and apply that to your non brand campaigns and then only run competitor terms in a competitor only campaign. So in this case I would be adding most of these competitor terms to our negative keyword list then if we also want to look at. So I'm going to take out these competitor terms now and now I'M going to do non brand searches. Are there anything in here? Well, here's some more. Right. Marty's Kelly. So I'm going to add, I'll add Marty's to this list and then I'm going to add Kelly as well and license. Okay. Another great way of finding negative keywords without manually going through the search query report is actually using an Ngram script. Now I got this from a guy named Nils. I will have this blog post in the description below. He updated this. This used to come from Brain Labs but I think it was outdated a bit since it was from 2015. What the script does and I'm not going to like go through how to install it or anything. I think Nils does a pretty good job of sharing all that information. But you run it as a script in your account and what this will do is pull basically phrases of one to three words. And then this gives you an idea. Are there any phrases that are really costing us money? Right. And so once you go into. So you go to two, this is a two gram analysis. So this is anything with two words. So here's like, all right, is there anything that's costing us quite a bit. I see how much this phrase has a higher cpa lower conversion rate which is here. So this conversion rate's lower than average. So maybe I would start looking at should I actually add how much as a negative keyword? I wouldn't do that quite yet. I would actually want to do further analysis before I would go into adding that. But here I'm just looking at the data, looking at high CPAs, looking at any sort of phrases that we should probably get rid of due to the engram analysis here. So this is great because this, what this is doing is pulling just basically root words. So it's not full searches, it's just finding root words of those and that can really help you be more efficient with your, your negative keyword additions. So here's three words and again I'm looking at cpa. Usually I'm looking at conversion rate and then this would help me find more negative. At least the root root words to be adding as negative keywords. Other tools you can use to create negative keywords or at least find them. I know Optimizer, if you're using any sort of third party software to help with your ad management, Optimizer has features here with finding negative keywords and finding positive keywords. This is using I believe an Ingram script themselves basically but in a nice user interface. So here, if you are using something like Optimizer or any other software out there. I know Add Evolver does this as well. Let me give a shout out to Add Evolver. Ad Evolver is a guy named Ed Leak. If you don't know Ed Leak, he's way smarter at Google Ads than me. So he runs a software company here called Ad Evolver. This will help you find negative keywords as well. So you can also use tools however you don't have to if you don't want to. So you can just manually go through search query reports, manually do keyword research, or even use an Ingram script, which is free. Okay, I'm ready to add some negative keywords. How the heck do I actually do that? Right, so you can actually add account level negative keywords. So you would do this in the account settings of your account. And then here you can go up to 1000 negative keywords. This actually just gets applied to all of your campaigns. So here, negative keyword account level. This also impacts performance Max campaigns. So nice feature that they gave you. Again, you can only do a thousand here, but you can add these at the account level, then you can do campaign level. And this is normally where I'm adding most of our negative keywords. So you can add at the campaign level or you can add at the ad group level. Now the only reason you would be doing ad group level is because you're trying to maybe funnel some traffic to another ad group. I don't normally recommend adding at the ad group level. In fact, I normally don't even recommend adding at the campaign itself level. Like, if I were to just put the word used in here. This is just at this campaign level. What I find a lot of people do, they'll add negatives at this campaign level. It gets super messy. But then they're running 10 different campaigns and I'm like, hey, these negatives should also be applied to all nine other campaigns that you're running. So the most efficient way of adding negative keywords is utilizing what is called a list. So you'll see in this account, I'm going to remove this. You'll see I have a universal. I have brand terms and I have competitors. So what does this even mean? Right? Well, universal is a list that I created, and that means it is should be universally applied to all of our campaigns. And so inside of this negative keyword list, you will see terms that I don't want to show for any of my campaigns. Now, I could add these just at the account level, but for the purpose of most of my campaigns on this Account. I just am using the negative keyword list and I am used to using negative keywords list. So I keep things very tight and in order using that. Then you'll see brand terms. Brand brand terms are. This is a non brand campaign. I added my brand name as a negative keyword to prevent my brand terms from showing in this campaign. So I make a brand terms native keyword list. That way all my brand terms get funneled to my brand campaign. Another issue that I find within a lot of accounts is brand terms firing and non brand campaigns. This is how you solve it. You add your brand terms as a negative keyword list. Then competitors. I already talked about that. But these would be competitor names. Okay, so I have these universal terms. How would I actually go about adding these? Right? So we have cost to wash roof, how to wash roof, etc. How would I actually go about adding some of these as negative keywords? Well, in this case what you do. And so these are universal. So I'm going to go to my universal list, I'm going to hit apply and I'm going to paste. Now I, I don't want to add these just as broad match. So let's talk about match types real quick. All right? Negative keyword match types. So you have broad match, you had phrase match and you have exact match. They do not operate at all like positive keywords. So with positive keywords, exact match pretty much operates like a phrase match. Anymore phrase operates almost like broad match modified did back in the day. And broad is just casting a wide net. I have an entire video on keyword match types that will be in the description below. With negative keywords though, here's how they work. So if you add, in this example, if you add running shoes, broad, okay, so that's just straight up adding it. You're not adding any brackets or quotations or anything. It's just adding running shoes. Your ad could still show for blue tennis shoes. It could show for running shoe, right? However, it won't show for blue running shoes and it won't show for shoes running. It's basically looking at these two words. All right? You don't want to show for running or shoes. So if these two words are in the search term, it will not fire for you. So in most cases, adding your negative keywords as broad is fine. And in fact it's what most people do. However, you can go and restrict it a little bit. That way you have some more control of how this works. So here we have negative phrase match. So negative phrase match for running Shoes and negative phrase match by the way would be like this. That would equal negative phrase match. And then this would be exact. And then with nothing is broad. So with negative phrase match running shoes, you could still show for blue tennis shoes. Again, same with broad. You could still show for running shoe. Again, same with broad. However, you won't show for blue running shoes and you won't show for running shoes. However, you would show for shoes running broad would actually take that out because it doesn't care about the phrase. So when you do a phrase match negative, basically you're you are taking out this exact phrase. Now one thing to consider. Google does a really good job when on your keywords that you're bidding on, it does a really good job for Google's benefit of showing for misspellings and singular and plural. So it does close variance, right? For negative keywords doesn't exist. So if you were to add running shoes phrase match negative, just like that, you could still show for the search running shoe. Why? Because you didn't, you didn't negate the singular version of that phrase match. So you have to be careful make sure if you're adding, let's say you don't sell running shoes at all, make sure you would add running shoes singular and plural. That way you take care of both of them. Otherwise you will find the singular version or variation inside of your search query report. Then we have exact match. Exact match is exactly how you think. So negative exact match keyword running shoes. Basically it has to exactly be running shoes in order for it to negate. So you would still show up for blue running shoes and running shoe plur or singular. Right? That's why you still have to add this. You would have to add running shoes plus running shoe as exact match negatives. But running shoes plural is what you're negating with exact match. So my universal keywords here, how would I actually go about adding this? So we have cost to wash roof. In this case, I'm just going to add this as phrase. And then sometimes I also will do this. I'll just add it as exact match to how to wash roof. I'm going to add that as phrase. And then sometimes I do this as well. I'll share why. And then we have pressure wash roof. We don't do any pressure washering or washing. So I don't even need to do that. So I'm going to just do pressure wash and then roof restoration. Roof restoration license. Now this is one I have to be careful with. We are licensed, right? But this is someone who's looking for probably an actual license. And so they're not looking to hire a roofing company. So in this case I'm going to add it as exact match. Why don't I add this as phrase because it potentially could kill someone looking for like licensed roofers. I just, you know, I'm being cautious. So in that one I just want to add exact match. I just don't. Hey, anyone who's looking for roof restoration license or I should do this as well. Well, I guess that is kind of spelled wrong, isn't it? So you see, you see how that's spelled wrong? So I'm going to leave it. But now I have to do this. And then I'm going to do the misspelled version of it too. So I have the correct spelling, singular and plural, the incorrect spelling, singular and plural. And I'm knocking those out and that's all with exact match for this specific case. Again, I'm just being a little probably too conservative with that. That term. But I just want to make sure I don't knock anything out with licenses. Let me show you an example. All right. Here is a screenshot of a negative keyword list I found in an audit. And I'm highlighting in. So this was a out of area negative keyword list. This was a local based business in Los Angeles. So they just went and added basically all the out of state big city names and also the abbreviation of the big city names. Here's the problem in which is Indiana, which is where I live. Why would you not want to add in. And I showed them this in the audit because you end up killing painters in San Diego. This in was used in a lot of their terms that actually converted for them. So I showed them, hey, you guys killed, you know, 25 of your conversions because you added the abbreviation of Indiana, which is just in. But 25% of your conversions, people are literally just typing in painters in San Diego. So you have to be very, very cautious with negative keywords. I've seen people whack accounts out because they add the wrong negative keywords. But hey, you're going to be an expert after this video on negative keywords and you'll, you'll make sure not to do that. All right, so here we go. I've got Costa wash roof. And by the way, I could even do this to just clean it up further. Some of you are probably wondering that actually I want to keep my exact match cost wash how to wash like that. So cost to wash roof how to wash how to wash roof exact again and then cool, we're all good there. So bam, I'm going to now save that to my list and we're all set. So I would do that with these competitor terms as well. All right, so for competitor terms again, I'm going to just breeze through this. We'll probably just skip through it. But here's how I'm going to add this. Call Cades roofing. I don't actually want that. I just want cades. Now you'll see I did it in phrase. I could do it in just broad. I have a habit of adding them all in phrase and never using broadcast. But broad is safe. Again, just look at the match types. So I would add that and then I would also do this and same with so smart choice roofing. Well this one I'm going to do like that. That's fine. And five star roofing. So that's fine. We'll do exact version of it and then five star roofing and then these others are fine. I don't want to go through all of this. So look, these are going to get added. Why did I add the exact match of those negative keywords while also adding broad or phrase matches of them? Here's why. Because now when I'm looking through my search query report, you see how cost to wash roof is excluded. The reason it's showing excluded is because I added that either as a phrase or exact match. So here's Costa Wash Roof. And if I go back to my keyword list, negative keyword list, you'll notice cost to wash roof exact match. So I had cost to wash what? Which would negate that term anyways. But watch, if I remove this and then I go back to that search term report. So here it is. Costa Wash Roof. You see how it doesn't show it as excluded anymore? So that is why I also add that exact match version of it. That way I know what I've already added as negative keywords. So I'm not overlapping my work. And so just add adds efficiency to it. All right, I need to add a negative keyword list. How do I actually do that? So here I'm in negative keywords. I'm going to go up here and then I am going to act as if I'm adding it to the campaign level. So remember Sydney was an out of Area 1. And then you see this box here? If I just hit save, this would go to the campaign. If I hit this checkbox, save to new or existing list. I'm going to do another one called out of Area, and that will create Boom, the new out of area negative keyword list. So super easy to add. Boom. There you go. You now know how to take back some control of your account by adding negative keywords. Get that money out of Google's pockets, put it back in your pocket so your ads are not showing for any irrelevant traffic. I hope you got great value from this and I will see you on the next video. Sam.