So how do we go about targeting your campaign and avoiding overly broad, expanded-match keywords? We generate an extensive negative keyword list to run against your broad-match keywords. To build a great negative keyword list, we first work off a generic list of negatives that work across many campaign categories. Words such as free, career, jobs, courses, etc. are often good negative keywords.
To find more negative keywords that are unique to your market, we will run a “search query report” from your AdWords campaign and get a partial list of queries that triggered your ads. We will see if there are any keywords we want to block. We also use special javascript code to pull out the actual search queries in your Google Analytics reports, but the real skill of using negatives is in knowing how to apply them to your account.
The matrix below shows exactly how Google treats negative broad, phrase, and exact-match keywords against a variety of search queries. Study this chart carefully to make sure you are using these match types properly. (Click on the chart to enlarge)
What this chart does not cover is the use of single-word negative keywords. Google gives many examples on their AdWords Blog that indicate that a single negative keyword will block any query that contains that keyword. The consensus of AdWords professionals also supports the contention that negative phrase and negative broad matches are the same for single keywords, and by deduction there is no “expanded” matching for negative keywords. Thus, the negative keyword “shoe” would not block “shoes,” “sandals,” or “footwear” like the positive keyword would trigger those expanded matches.
Be cautious with your use of negatives. They can accidentally block some very good traffic, and you will never know what you are missing. Because negatives do not show in conversion data and you rarely look at them, once you have put them in your campaign, they can be a silent killer.
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