Negative Keywords 101: The Google Ads Setting Most Small Businesses Never Touch

06 September 2026·6 min read

Quick answer: Negative keywords tell Google Ads which searches to never show your ad for, even if they contain your target keyword. Without them, you're likely paying for clicks from job seekers ("[your service] jobs"), DIYers ("how to [do it] myself"), bargain hunters ("free [service]"), and people in the wrong suburb entirely. A starter list plus a monthly 15-minute check of your search terms report is usually enough to cut a meaningful chunk of wasted spend. 📈

If you've ever run Google Ads and felt like the cost per click seemed high for the volume of actual customers you were getting, negative keywords are very likely part of the story — and they're one of the few settings in the whole platform that's both simple to understand and consistently ignored.

Here's the thing that makes this worth fixing today rather than "eventually" 💖 — negative keywords don't require a bigger budget, a smarter bidding strategy, or new ad creative. They just stop you paying for clicks that were never going to become customers, which means the fix is closer to free money than almost anything else in your account.

What most businesses get wrong

Most small businesses set up a Google Ads campaign, choose broad or phrase match keywords because that's what the setup wizard defaults to, and then never open the search terms report again. Broad and phrase match are designed to catch related searches — which is useful for finding customers you hadn't thought of, but it also means your ad for "plumber Gold Coast" can show up for "plumber apprentice jobs Gold Coast" or "how to fix a leaking tap myself", and you pay for the click either way.

The second mistake is treating negative keywords as a set-and-forget task done once at campaign launch. New wasted-spend terms show up every month as language and search behaviour shift — a list built once in January is stale by June.

The Universal Starter Negative Keyword List

Add these as campaign-level negative keywords (broad match negative, unless noted) to almost any Google Ads account before you do anything else:

Employment terms: jobs, careers, job vacancy, apprentice, employment, hiring, resume, cv

Free / cheap intent: free, cheap, discount code, coupon, giveaway

DIY intent: how to [do it] myself, DIY, diy guide, tutorial, step by step

Research-only intent: definition, meaning, what is, wikipedia, reddit, course, training

Wrong location: add the specific wrong suburbs/regions near you as exact match negatives — e.g. if you service the Gold Coast, negative out nearby areas you don't cover (Brisbane CBD, Sunshine Coast, etc.) so budget doesn't leak into locations you can't service.

Monthly maintenance routine (15 minutes):
1. Open the Search Terms report for the last 30 days.
2. Sort by cost, highest first.
3. Scan the top 20-30 terms for anything irrelevant that still cost money.
4. Add irrelevant terms as negatives at the right level (exact match if it's a one-off odd term, broad if it's a pattern you'll see again).
5. Note down any pattern (a suburb, a phrase) that keeps recurring — that's a sign to build it into your ongoing negative list, not just a one-time exclusion.

A local service business paying for "how to fix it myself" clicks: Running ads for a home repair service, the search terms report showed a steady trickle of spend on "how to fix [problem] myself", "fix [problem] DIY", and "[problem] tutorial" — searches from people who never intended to hire anyone. Adding a DIY-intent negative list cut wasted spend on those exact terms and freed up budget for actual "book" and "quote" intent searches.

A retailer paying for "jobs" and "careers" searches: An online store running ads on its brand and category terms noticed clicks on "[brand] jobs", "[brand] careers", and "[brand] warehouse hiring" — people looking for employment, not products. A one-line employment-terms negative list stopped this immediately, at essentially zero setup effort for the amount of spend it recovered.

How to actually build the list, month by month

1. Start with the universal list above on day one. These terms waste money in almost every industry, so there's no reason to wait for data to prove it.

2. Set a recurring 15-minute calendar reminder. The search terms report is where new wasted-spend patterns show up first — it's the highest-value 15 minutes you'll spend on the account each month.

3. Decide match type deliberately. Use exact match negatives for specific one-off irrelevant terms, and broad match negatives for patterns you expect to recur (like "jobs" or "free").

4. Build a shared negative keyword list, not per-campaign lists. If you run more than one campaign, a shared list applied across all of them saves you repeating the same clean-up work every month.

5. Don't over-negative your own service terms. Be careful not to accidentally block a term that includes a legitimate customer intent — read the full search phrase, not just the keyword that triggered it.

💡 The search terms report is more valuable than most dashboards. It's the one place that shows you exactly what people typed before they saw your ad — reading it monthly tells you more about wasted spend than any automated report will.

Mistakes to avoid

Setting negatives once at launch and never returning. New irrelevant search terms appear constantly as language shifts — a list from six months ago is already out of date.
Using broad match negatives too aggressively. A broad negative on a common word can accidentally block legitimate searches too — check what else that word appears in first.
Confusing negative keywords with regular keyword bidding. Negatives don't help you rank or bid better on good terms — they only stop bad ones costing you money.
Ignoring geographic negatives. If you only service certain suburbs, not excluding nearby areas means paying for enquiries you'll have to turn away.
Building the list from guesswork instead of your own data. Generic downloads are a fine starting point, but your actual search terms report always surfaces things a generic list misses.

Frequently asked questions

How often should I check the search terms report?

Monthly is a reasonable minimum for most small accounts; if you're spending a larger daily budget, checking weekly catches wasted spend faster and adds up to a meaningful saving over a quarter.

Can negative keywords hurt my ads if I get them wrong?

Yes — an overly broad negative can accidentally exclude searches you actually wanted. This is the honest trade-off: negatives are powerful but not risk-free, so always check the exact search terms a proposed negative would have blocked before adding it broadly.

Do I need negative keywords if I only use exact match keywords?

Less urgently, but still yes — Google's "close variants" matching means even exact match keywords can trigger on near-matches you didn't intend, so a basic negative list is still worth having.

Will this fix all my wasted ad spend?

No, and it shouldn't be sold as a silver bullet — negative keywords address one specific type of waste (irrelevant search intent). Poor ad copy, weak landing pages, or wrong bidding strategy are separate problems negative keywords won't touch.