Why it matters for your business
Your ads can show for searches you never intended, and every click on those costs you money. Negative keywords block them. They’re one of the simplest ways to stop wasting ad budget, especially for small businesses where every click counts.
Example
A plumber advertising “emergency plumber” might add these negative keywords:
- jobs, salary, apprenticeship: people looking for work, not a plumber
- DIY, how to: people planning to fix it themselves
- free: people unlikely to pay
Now their ads won’t show for searches like “plumber jobs near me” or “how to fix a leaking pipe”.
How to check or improve it
- Open the search terms report in Google Ads to see the real searches that triggered your ads.
- Add irrelevant terms as negative keywords every week, especially in the first months.
- Use match types carefully so you don’t block good searches by accident.
- Keep shared negative keyword lists you can apply to all your campaigns.