Negative keywords

What it is

A negative keyword is an exclusion, not a target. If you sell enterprise software, adding “free”, “crack” and “jobs” as negatives means searches containing those words no longer trigger your ads.

Negatives have their own match types: negative broad blocks queries containing all the words in any order; negative phrase blocks those containing the words in that order; negative exact blocks only the identical query. Unlike positive broad match, negatives do not expand to synonyms, plurals or misspellings; adding “cheap” does not block “affordable”.

Why it matters

Where you add a negative matters as much as the word. Permanent exclusions such as competitor complaints, job-seeker terms and freebie language belong in account-level shared lists; removing a theme from one campaign belongs at campaign level; steering traffic to the ad group with the best-fitting copy belongs at ad group level.

Two warnings: over-blocking with negative broad match can quietly choke a healthy ad group, and a negative that conflicts with an active keyword stops that keyword serving entirely. When a healthy keyword suddenly drops to zero impressions, check for conflicts first.

How Tecrube uses it

The loop moves into the chat: pull the search terms report, ask which queries burn budget without converting, add or remove negatives on Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising at the level you choose. Bulk additions take one request.

Each addition is a real write action: which terms, with which match type, go where is previewed first; nothing changes in the account without your approval, and the applied list is written to the audit log.

Example

“Scan queries that spent without converting in the last 14 days; propose job-seeker and ‘free’ terms for the account-level list and the rest as phrase-match campaign negatives.” The preview arrives as two separate lists; the ones you approve are applied.