Negative keywords in Google Ads: stop paying for irrelevant clicks
In an unoptimised account, half the budget often goes to clicks that will never become a lead. Negative keywords are the cheapest way to stop it.
Why broad match needs negatives
Broad and phrase match extend reach automatically, including phrasing you would never add yourself. Google matches on query meaning, not just literal word overlap.
That's useful for scale, but without negatives the system quickly starts showing ads for 'free', 'DIY', 'courses', 'vacancy' — people who aren't going to buy.
The search terms report is the only way to see what a user actually typed. Bids and creatives can sit untouched for weeks, but the terms report deserves a check at least every three to four days in month one.
A baseline list for the Uzbekistan market
A standard set that removes most junk in almost any niche: free, second-hand, download, DIY, courses, training, vacancy, job, employee reviews, salary.
A local specific: queries naming neighbouring cities and countries you don't deliver to — Almaty, Bishkek, Dushanbe, Kazakhstan. Geo-targeting filters by user location, not by query content.
Add competitor names to negatives if you don't want to pay for another company's brand traffic — a deliberate call many advertisers simply forget to make.
Account level versus campaign level
Keep negatives that are irrelevant to the whole business — 'free', 'vacancy' — at account level via a shared list, so every new campaign inherits the cleanup from day one.
Keep campaign-specific negatives local: a furniture seller negates 'repair' in a sofas campaign but keeps it in an assembly services campaign.
Overlap between your own campaigns is a common hidden problem — a brand campaign and a general commercial campaign can bid against each other for the same click without negatives keeping them apart.
Negative phrases versus negative keywords
A negative keyword 'repair' in broad match excludes any query containing that word in any order. A negative phrase 'DIY repair' excludes only that exact sequence — a narrower tool for specific cases.
Overly aggressive broad-match negatives cut more demand than intended. 'Cheap' as a broad negative can exclude a query like 'affordable turnkey repair' where the meaning overlaps.
Check the negative list for conflicts with your own keywords at least monthly — accounts accumulate negatives that accidentally block their own promoted queries over time.
Measuring the effect of a cleanup
After adding a batch of negatives, compare CTR and impression share before and a week after. Rising CTR at the same budget usually means impressions got more targeted.
Calculate the share of spend on excluded queries for the month before the cleanup — a concrete figure for what the business paid for irrelevant traffic. In accounts with no negatives, this often runs 15–30% of budget.
Regularity beats one big sweep. Ten negatives added every week works more reliably than one large cleanup once a quarter, because new irrelevant queries keep appearing.