Google Ads Negative Keywords: Match Types and a Profit Test

A negative keyword is a word or phrase that stops your ad from showing on searches that contain it. In Google Ads, it is the control that removes a search before you pay for the click.

Negatives never stretch to close variants, though, and a long list can block searches that still sell.

I took the rules below from Google Ads Help (checked 29 October 2026) and ran the profit test on an illustrative bike shop.

How do negative keyword match types work?

Negative keyword match types set how closely a search must match the excluded term before Google Ads blocks the ad.

Broad blocks a search containing all the terms in any order, phrase the terms in that order, and exact only that search with nothing added.

Broad is the default. Per Google’s negative keyword guidance, negatives don’t expand to synonyms, stemmed forms or singular and plural versions the way positive keywords do.

They only account for casing and for misspellings Google already corrects in the results.

Pick the row before you type

A florist who excludes flowers on broad match blocks red flowers, because every negative term is present. Red flower still buys the click, because the singular is a different word to a negative.

That one search shows the whole close-variant gap: add flower as a second line, or leave the leak open.

Google’s own example, the negative keyword running shoes in each match type, shows where each one stops:

Phrase match is strict about order and loose about neighbours. Running shoes as a phrase negative blocks buy running shoes online but not shoes for running, where the words are there and the order isn’t.

Exact match blocks one search only. [free shipping] stops free shipping and lets free shipping code and shoes free shipping through. Use it when the unwanted term sits next to a product name you still want.

Rule of thumb: exact for a term that sits near a product name, phrase for a fixed unwanted phrase, broad only for a word that never comes with a purchase.

Where should each negative keyword live?

Each negative keyword belongs at the narrowest level that still catches the waste.

That means an ad group for one product set, a campaign for a theme it never sells, and the account list or a shared list for terms no campaign should ever buy.

The list limits come from About negative keyword lists in Google Ads Help. The Performance Max cap rose from 100 to 10,000 per campaign in March 2025, per Google’s Performance Max update.

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How many negative keywords each Google Ads level holds

Level	Negative keywords allowed
Account list	1,000
Shared list (each, max 20)	5,000
Performance Max campaign, at launch	100
Performance Max campaign, now	10,000

Match the scope to the waste

Ad group negatives fit one product set. Block kids on an adult sneaker ad group so it stops competing for children’s sizes, and leave the kids campaign free to buy that demand.

Put kids on the account list and you have switched off a product line.

Campaign negatives fit a theme that campaign never sells: a new-bikes campaign excludes jobs and repair without touching the careers or service campaigns.

Spend the account list’s 1,000 slots on universal non-buying intent such as free, DIY, salary, login and PDF.

Attach a shared list only to campaigns that share its policy, because a list attached everywhere is an account negative with extra steps.

Google’s negative keyword help adds a length edge: an ad can still show when the negative term comes after the 16th word of a search.

So write down what each term is meant to block, and before you add it, ask one question: would this negative have blocked a search that already converted?

Why a longer list isn’t safer

Deduplicate before you add, and refuse any broad negative that overlaps a product name, a brand or a modifier such as pro or mini, because those words often sit inside the product you want to scale.

Work in this order: brand-safety terms, then product mismatches, then low-value intent after a spend check. For how search evidence connects to product economics, see PPC research and the break-even CPC.

How do you find negative keywords in the search terms report?

You find negative keywords in the search terms report, which lists the actual searches that triggered your ads. The costly ones with no conversion value are the candidates.

Google’s guide to negative keywords from search terms shows how to add them straight from the report to an ad group, a campaign or a list.

Search terms you add from the report in a Search campaign go in as exact match unless you add the phrase or broad symbols yourself.

That default is safe, but it blocks one search at a time, so group the recurring pattern into a phrase negative once you have seen it three or four times.

Keep each weekly batch small enough to read its effect on product revenue and margin. For the campaign-structure side, see how to optimise ecommerce PPC campaigns.

Which negative keywords should an ecommerce shop add?

An ecommerce shop adds negatives for five reasons: the searcher isn’t buying, wants a business model you don’t offer, wants a product another campaign sells, is somewhere you don’t ship to, or searches a rival brand you chose not to buy.

Take a shop that sells new road bikes at retail, ships in one country and runs separate kids’ and electric bike campaigns.

Wholesale belongs on the not-buying list only when the shop has no trade offer. If a trade campaign exists, keep the word off the account list and put it on the consumer campaigns alone.

On the road bike campaign, a phrase negative on electric blocks electric road bike wherever the word appears.

An exact negative [electric] blocks only the one-word search, so the longer search gets through: check the match type against a real search before you upload.

A rival brand goes in as exact match so you don’t swallow the generic words around it. [rival bikes] blocks that search but not road bikes like rival bikes, which may still be a buyer comparing options.

A broad negative on pro, mini, black or any word in a product title will suppress the product you meant to scale.

When a term is on the list in the singular only, add the plural as its own line: shoe does not stand in for shoes.

One shared non-buying list plus campaign-level product mismatches beats filling the shared-list cap with unscoped terms.

For starter groupings to edit rather than copy, seven negative keyword templates from Rebus are a reasonable shelf; cut anything that appears in a title you still want to sell.

Can negative keywords hurt performance?

Yes, negative keywords hurt performance when they block searches that still sell, and Google Ads Help itself warns that too many negatives can make your ads reach fewer customers.

Too few cost money as well. WordStream’s 2025 study of 15,666 accounts found that 25% had never added a single negative keyword, as Rankite’s summary of that benchmark reports.

WordStream’s 2025 search benchmarks put the average cost per click at $5.26 across more than 16,000 US campaigns, so ten wasted clicks a day on one search, for example, come to about $1,578 a month.

Test each search on profit, not conversions

A search earns a negative when the contribution it brings, its conversion value times your contribution margin, stays below its cost.

At a 30% margin, the break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.30 = 3.33; in POAS terms that is a break-even of 1.0, as POAS vs ROAS explains.

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Profit after ad cost per search term, at a 30% margin

Search term	Profit after ad cost
road bike repair	-€84
road bike size chart	-€46
cheap road bike	-€12
carbon road bike	€210

The size chart search converts nothing directly, but a shopper checking sizes can buy days later, or buy a different frame.

The cheap road bike search is the trap: its ROAS of 3 sits just below break-even, yet blocking it deletes the revenue along with the small loss.

Fix the product’s margin or priority instead.

Performance Max: a 10,000 cap makes over-blocking easy

Google’s Performance Max negative keyword documentation limits campaign negatives to Search and Shopping inventory, not every placement Performance Max serves.

They still don’t match close variants, so an excluded term can let a similar search through while a long list quietly cuts reach.

Ship ten terms, then keep or roll back

Take the ten search terms with the highest cost and zero conversion value over the last 14 days.

If you change bids in the same window, tune Shopping and Performance Max bids in a separate week so the exclusion test is the only change you are reading.

That product check is where doing it by hand stops scaling.

Product Journeys shows when a click on one product led to the purchase of another, and Product Segmentation segments every product on its own clicks and return, then writes the labels to Google Merchant Center.

You see which products a search actually sells before a negative goes live.

Final thoughts

A negative keyword is a bet that a search will never sell.

Place it on a small batch with the profit numbers in front of you, and be as ready to take it back as you were to add it.

This week, export the last 14 days of search terms and run the ten-term test on the costliest ones with no conversion value.

If you are new to exclusions and want a second walk-through of the basics before you paste a list into a live campaign, Netcodesign shows how to refine Google Ads targeting with exclusions.

If your negative keyword review is part of a wider account clean-up, the paid media insights from Sprints & Sneakers give broader campaign optimisation context.