Negative keywords and the search terms report: the cheapest hour in the account
In the era of loose matching and AI campaigns you no longer decide what the ad appears on. You do decide what it does not appear on — and that is now the main cost control, the one most often neglected.
- The search terms report is the only place you see what you are actually paying for. Going through it weekly pays off.
- Negative keywords have their own match types and behave differently from positive ones, especially with plurals and misspellings.
- The most valuable find is not the nonsense to exclude but the queries that convert and deserve their own campaign.
You used to decide what a Google Ads campaign appeared on. Today, with looser matching, Performance Max and AI Max, the system decides. What is left to you is the authority to say “not this”. It sounds like a retreat, but in practice it is a stronger instrument than it seems — and the only one that can stop a budget quietly leaking away.
The search terms report: what to look for
The search terms report shows what people actually typed before clicking your ad. It is the only place you see reality instead of your idea of it. Look for four things, in this order of importance:
- Queries converting at a good price. The most valuable find. They deserve their own ad group, their own ad and often their own landing page.
- Queries with spend and no conversion. Sort by cost and work through the top. Either exclude them, or find out why they do not work.
- Queries with a different intent. Job hunting at your company, complaints, how-to guides, dissertations, “free”, “reviews”, “vs”. Often zero conversion rate and plenty of spend.
- Queries revealing a gap in your range. People searching for a product you do not have, or a variant you do not sell. That is commercial information, not just something to exclude.
Weekly: go through the queries with the highest spend and no conversion. Monthly: the whole report, and update the shared lists. After any larger intervention (a new campaign, a loosened target, enabling AI Max): check within a week, not within a month.
Match types for negative keywords
This is where mistakes happen most, because negative keywords do not behave like positive ones.
| Type | Written as | What it blocks | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad | free | Queries containing all the given words in any order | Does not block plurals, misspellings or synonyms — add those separately |
| Phrase | "free shoes" | Queries containing exactly this phrase | Word order matters |
| Exact | [free shoes] | Only this exact query | Safest, but covers the least |
The key difference from positive keywords: negative keywords do not expand to close variants. Exclude “free” and the query “freee” or “free?” may still get through. For words blocking large volumes it therefore pays to add forms and common misspellings too.
Shared lists: mandatory hygiene
Copying the same fifty negatives into every campaign is the road to every campaign being different in six months. Shared lists solve that. A sensible set to have in every account:
- Universal noise. “free”, “second hand”, “used”, “how to”, “DIY”, “wikipedia”, “forum”, “download”. Careful: for a shop selling second-hand goods, “used” is a core query. The list is not universal, it is universally searched.
- Jobs and careers. “jobs”, “salary”, “vacancy”, “hiring”, “career”. In fields like hospitality or construction this is a significant share of wasted spend.
- Service and complaints. “complaint”, “return”, “repair”, “warranty”, “contact” — unless you have a separate campaign aimed at serving existing customers.
- Competitors. Either excluded, or in their own campaign with their own budget. Never mixed in.
- Your brand as a negative in non-brand campaigns. See brand vs. non-brand.
Where negative keywords work today
- Search campaigns. At campaign and ad group level, plus shared lists.
- Performance Max. Campaign-level negatives and shared lists are now available, alongside brand exclusions. See the article on PMax.
- AI Max. Here they matter most of all. Accounts that launched AI Max on defaults without negatives report the fastest rise in cost per conversion.
What to avoid when excluding
- Excluding on a hunch. A query with no conversion after ten clicks may not be a bad query, just a small sample. Look at spend, not only at the zero in the conversion column.
- Over-broad broad negatives. Excluding “cheap” may also kill “cheap flights to Rome” if that is exactly what you sell.
- A negative that overrides a positive keyword. If a campaign has a keyword and your list has its negative, the negative wins — and you wonder why the campaign is not showing.
- Endless lists with no review. Once a year, go through what you exclude. Ranges change, and a category excluded three years ago may now be your main one.
- Excluding instead of fixing. When unqualified enquiries arrive, negatives help, but the real fix is often on the landing page and in the form.
What to take away
An hour over the search terms report tends to be the highest-return hour in the whole account, because it costs nothing and saves money directly. As the systems take over matching decisions, its value rises rather than falls. Set a firm rhythm — weekly for the most expensive part, monthly for the whole — and above all look not only for what to exclude but also for what deserves its own campaign.
Common questions
How often should I check search terms?
Weekly go through the queries with the highest spend and no conversion; monthly the whole report, updating your shared negative lists. After any larger change — a new campaign, a loosened return target, enabling broad matching or AI Max — check within a week rather than a month. It is in the first days after such a change that budget flows fastest into queries you did not expect.
Do negative keywords work in Performance Max?
Yes. Campaign-level negative keywords and shared negative lists are now available in Performance Max, alongside separate brand exclusions. That is a substantial change from the early days of this campaign type and means the discipline around the search terms report applies in PMax just as it does in search campaigns. Check the current scope in Google Ads Help, as it keeps expanding.
Does a negative keyword also block misspellings and plurals?
No. Unlike positive keywords, negative keywords do not expand to close variants. If you exclude a word in the singular, the plural may still get through, as may common misspellings or forms with extra accents. For terms blocking large volumes it therefore pays to add the most frequent forms and misspellings, which you will find in the search terms report itself.
- Performance Max Optimisation Guide 2026, Involve DigitalSource of the information on campaign-level negatives and shared lists in Performance Max. An agency source; verify the current scope in Google Ads Help.
- Google AI MAX for Search Campaigns: Implementation Checklist, ALM CorpSource of the observation that accounts launching AI Max without negative keywords report the fastest rise in cost per conversion. A vendor blog.