Negative keywords
Negative keywords are terms added to a search advertising campaign to prevent ads from being shown for queries containing those words, reducing wasted spend on irrelevant or unqualified searches.
A negative keyword is an exclusion rather than a target. If you sell premium accounting software and add "free", "crack" and "jobs" as negatives, searches containing those words will not trigger your ads. Negatives have their own match types: negative broad blocks queries containing all the words in any order, negative phrase blocks queries containing the words in that order, and negative exact blocks only the precise query. Crucially, negative broad match does not expand to synonyms, misspellings or close variants the way positive broad match does — blocking "cheap" will not block "inexpensive", so lists need to be built explicitly.
Placement matters as much as wording. Negatives can be applied at ad group level (usually to steer traffic between your own ad groups), campaign level (to exclude themes from one campaign), or as shared account-level negative keyword lists applied across many campaigns — the right home for permanent exclusions like competitor complaints, job-seeker terms, adult or violent content, and free-seeker language. Ad-group negatives also do the routing work in tightly themed accounts, keeping a query in the ad group whose ad copy actually matches it.
The maintenance loop is straightforward: read the search terms report on a schedule, tag queries that spent without converting or that were clearly off-intent, and add them at the right level with the narrowest match type that does the job. Two cautions — over-blocking with negative broad can silently strangle a well-performing ad group, and negatives conflicting with your active keywords will stop them serving entirely, which is one of the most common causes of a keyword suddenly showing zero impressions. Note also that Performance Max supports negatives at the account level and, more recently, campaign-level negative keywords, though its search-term visibility remains limited.
Opus Growth turns this loop into a conversation: pull the search terms report, ask which queries burned budget without converting, and add or remove negatives at the level you choose across Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising. Because these are real write actions, each addition is returned as a dry run listing exactly which terms and which match types will be applied before anything changes in the account.
Frequently asked questions
Negative broad blocks any query containing all the words in any order; negative phrase blocks queries containing the words in that exact sequence; negative exact blocks only the identical query. Unlike positive keywords, negatives do not automatically catch synonyms, plurals or misspellings.
Use shared account-level lists for permanent, universal exclusions such as job-seeker or free-seeker terms. Use campaign-level negatives for theme separation and ad-group negatives for routing traffic to the ad group whose copy matches the query best.
Yes, if they are too broad or conflict with your active keywords. A conflicting negative will block a keyword from serving entirely, so review conflicts whenever a previously healthy keyword drops to zero impressions.
