← Glossary
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing on searches containing particular words or phrases.
Why it matters
On a broad-match account they are the main lever you have for stopping spend on irrelevant traffic, and untended accounts routinely lose a quarter of their budget to it.
What people get wrong
Adding negatives by threshold - every term with no conversions and more than some number of clicks. Intent matters more than the count. A high-intent term that has not converted yet is a term to watch; a low-intent one that has spent nothing is still worth blocking.