The Google Ads Negative Keywords List That Saves 40% of Your Budget
40-70% of your ad spend is going to clicks that will never convert.
Not because your bids are wrong. Not because your ads are weak. Because Google is matching your keywords to searches that have nothing to do with what you sell — and you’re paying for every click.
We audit accounts every week. The pattern is consistent: a business spending $5,000/month on Google Ads has $2,000–$3,500 of that budget absorbed by job seekers, students doing research, competitors checking prices, and people who typed the wrong thing. That money is gone. No sale was ever going to come from those clicks.
Negative keywords are how you stop it.
What Negative Keywords Actually Do
A negative keyword tells Google: don’t show my ad when this word appears in the search.
If you sell enterprise accounting software and you add “free” as a negative keyword, someone searching “free accounting software” won’t see your ad. You don’t pay. You didn’t want that visitor anyway.
That’s it. The concept is straightforward. The work is in building the list comprehensively enough to actually matter — and then maintaining it as search behavior changes.
Most accounts have a handful of negatives added early on and never touched again. That’s why the waste compounds.
How We Build 200+ Negatives Per Account
When we start a new account, we don’t guess at negatives. We build from categories of known waste, then layer in account-specific blockers.
The initial build (first week):
We start with a master negative keyword list that covers the categories of traffic that almost never convert for any service or product business: informational searches, job seekers, competitor brand traffic, tool and software searchers, wrong-geography signals, and price shoppers outside the target market.
That baseline typically runs 120–150 keywords before we’ve looked at a single search term in the account.
The ongoing build:
Every week, we pull the search terms report — the actual queries that triggered your ads — and review it against what converted. Any pattern that shows cost without conversion gets added as a negative.
After 90 days of active management, most accounts are at 200–250 negatives. Mature accounts with 12+ months of data often exceed 300.
The goal isn’t a large list for its own sake. The goal is near-zero wasted spend.
The Categorized Negative Keyword Lists
These are the categories we build into every account, with examples. Take these as a starting point, not a complete solution — your account will have waste patterns unique to your industry.
Informational Intent
These searchers want to learn, not buy. They’re reading, researching, or studying. They may become buyers eventually — but not today, and not from a paid click.
how to
what is
what are
how do
why is
tutorial
guide
learn
course
training
example
examples
template
templates
diy
do it yourself
definition
overview
introduction
beginner
basics
101Add these at the campaign or account level. Informational searches bleed budget in every campaign.
Job Seekers
This category surprises people. Search for “marketing agency” and you’ll find it in the search terms of companies selling marketing services — right alongside queries from people who want to work at a marketing agency, not hire one.
jobs
job
careers
career
hiring
salary
salaries
resume
indeed
glassdoor
linkedin
internship
internships
entry level
remote work
part time
full time
apply
applicationCompetitor Brands
We won’t list specific names here — your competitors are yours to identify. But the approach is consistent: add your direct competitors’ brand names as negatives so you’re not paying for clicks from people who typed the wrong name.
The exception: if you’re running a deliberate conquest campaign. But that’s a separate campaign with its own budget and logic. In your core branded and service campaigns, competitor names are waste.
Check your search terms report specifically for: competitor name + review, competitor name + pricing, competitor name + alternatives. These show up constantly.
SEO and Software Tool Searches
If you run a service business, a huge source of invisible waste is people searching for tools that do what you do as a service. A content marketing agency will get clicks from people searching for “content strategy tool” or “keyword research software.” Those people want to do it themselves — they’re not buying an agency.
tool
tools
software
platform
app
application
plugin
extension
api
integration
saas
free trial
open source
download
chrome extension
spreadsheet
calculator
template
generator
checker
analyzer
audit toolWrong Geography (For Local and Regional Businesses)
If you serve a specific area, add every location you don’t serve as a negative. The cities, states, countries — all of them if your budget allows.
Also add generic geography signals if people frequently search with location modifiers that aren’t yours:
near me (if you don't serve that intent)
online (if you're in-person only)
virtual (if you're not offering virtual services)
nationwide (if you're local)
internationalCross-Service Overlap
This one requires knowing your business. If you’re a plumber who doesn’t do HVAC, add heating and cooling terms as negatives. If you’re a personal injury attorney who doesn’t handle family law, add divorce, custody, and adoption.
The pattern: any service adjacent to yours that you don’t offer. Google doesn’t know your service mix. It sees “contractor” and shows your ad to anyone searching for any type of contractor.
Map out what you don’t do. Block it.
Price Shoppers (When They’re Not Your Market)
This depends on your positioning. If you’re a premium service and price shoppers won’t convert, block them explicitly:
cheap
cheapest
affordable
budget
low cost
inexpensive
discount
coupon
coupon code
promo
promo code
free
free trial
no costIf you compete on price, obviously skip this category or use it selectively.
How to Find Your Own Waste
Everything above is a starting point. Your actual waste is sitting in your search terms report right now.
Where to find it:
Google Ads → Campaigns → Insights & Reports → Search Terms
Set the date range to the last 90 days. Sort by cost, descending.
What to look for:
Look at the top 50 results by cost. For each one, ask a single question: would someone searching this phrase ever buy from me?
If the answer is “unlikely” or “never,” add it as a negative. If it’s a pattern (all searches with a specific word), add the word rather than the exact phrase.
The weekly cadence:
Set a recurring 20-minute block once a week. Pull the search terms from the last 7 days. Review anything with 2+ clicks and no conversion. Add negatives.
This is where the compounding happens. The list grows. The waste shrinks. Over time, you’re not just blocking known bad traffic — you’re building a precise map of what your buyers actually search for versus what everyone else searches.
Match Types for Negatives (Different Rules Than Positive Keywords)
This is where most people get it wrong. Negative keyword match types work differently than positive keyword match types.
Negative broad match: blocks the ad if all words in the negative appear anywhere in the search, in any order. This is actually more restrictive than positive broad match — there’s no close variant matching for negatives.
Negative phrase match: blocks the ad if the words appear in that order as part of the search. Add “how to” as a negative phrase match, and searches for “how to use accounting software” are blocked, but “accounting software how to get started” might still trigger.
Negative exact match: blocks the ad only if the search is exactly that phrase, nothing more. Useful when you want to block a very specific query without being too broad.
The practical default:
For most of the categories above — informational intent, job seekers, tool searches — use negative broad match. You want broad coverage.
For competitor brand names, consider negative exact match or phrase match so you don’t accidentally block tangentially related terms.
One critical note: negative keywords do not use close variants. “Free” as a negative won’t block “frees” or “freely.” You may need to add plural and variant forms manually for high-priority negatives.
What This Looks Like in Practice
An account we audited recently: $4,200/month in spend, roughly 38% going to wasted clicks based on the search terms analysis. That’s $1,600/month — $19,200/year — funding clicks from job seekers, students, tool searchers, and people looking for a competitor.
After building out negatives across all categories and running a weekly review cadence for 60 days, wasted spend dropped below 8%.
Same budget. Same keywords. The difference was precision.
See Where Your Budget Is Going
The lists above will improve any account. But the real leverage is in seeing your specific waste — the exact queries that have been eating your budget.
We pull the search terms report as part of every audit. You get a line-by-line breakdown of what triggered your ads, what converted, and what didn’t — with a clear estimate of how much you’d recover by blocking the waste.
No commitment. We’ll show you the numbers.