If you run Google Ads for a local business, there is a good chance a chunk of your budget is going to searches that will never become customers. People looking for jobs, free stuff, DIY videos or a totally different service. The fix is negative keywords, and most accounts we audit either have none or have a short list someone added once and forgot about.
What negative keywords are
A negative keyword tells Google: do not show my ad when a search includes this word. If you are a roofing company and you add “jobs” as a negative, your ad stops showing for “roofing jobs near me,” which is someone looking for work, not someone with a leaking roof.
Every click on the wrong search costs you money. Negatives stop those clicks before they happen.
Why this matters more than ever
Google has been pushing broad match and automated campaigns for years. They can work, but they also match your ads to searches that are only loosely related to what you sell. Without a strong negative list, automation will happily spend your budget learning what does not work.
The lists every local business needs
Start with these categories and add to them every week:
- Jobs and careers: jobs, hiring, salary, careers, resume, internship, training, certification
- Free and DIY: free, diy, how to, youtube, tutorial, video, manual, parts
- Wrong intent: reviews of your competitors, complaints, lawsuit, scam
- Wrong service: services you do not offer that share words with ones you do
- Wrong location: cities or states you do not serve that people type into searches
- Competitor names: unless you are intentionally bidding on them
How to find the rest
The best negatives come from your own account. Open the search terms report every week and look at what people actually typed before they clicked. For each junk search, add the word that made it junk. After a few weeks, your list will be tuned to your business and your market.
On one exotic car rental account we manage, the negative list grew to 84 terms, blocking things like cheap economy rentals, rideshare rentals, car sales and jobs. For Capital Glass in Sacramento, we launched a brand new Search campaign with 67 negatives from day one, and 60 clicks turned into 6 tracked leads in the first 16 days.
Where to add them
- Account level for words that are never right, like jobs and free
- Campaign level for words that are wrong for one campaign but fine for another
- Shared lists so you can apply the same list to multiple campaigns in one click
Be careful with match types. A broad negative like “free” blocks any search with that word. A phrase or exact negative is more precise. When in doubt, check the search terms that would be blocked before adding it.
Do not over block
It is possible to go too far. Adding “cheap” might block junk for a luxury rental, but it could also block real customers for a budget service. Negatives should match your business, not a template. Review the list every month and make sure it is not choking good traffic.
The bigger picture
Negative keywords are one part of a healthy account. The others: tracking phone calls as conversions, a landing page built to get calls, a brand campaign that protects your name and weekly optimization based on real data. We cover what a healthy budget looks like in how much Google Ads costs in St. Louis.
If you want a second set of eyes on your account, our Google Ads management starts with a free audit. We will show you the junk searches you are paying for right now.
