A Weekly Negative Keyword Workflow That Saves Real Money

Sort by cost, not by volume

You are looking for money leaving, not clicks arriving. A term with four clicks at $18 each deserves more attention than one with forty clicks at 30 cents. Almost everyone gets this backwards.

The six categories that recur everywhere

DIY and how-to ("how to fix a leaking tap"). Job seekers ("plumber apprenticeship"). Competitor brand names, unless you're deliberately conquesting. Wrong locations. Price-sensitive modifiers like free, cheap, DIY. And adjacent services you don't actually offer.

Use three levels of negative list

A shared account-level list for universal waste that you apply to every campaign. Campaign-level negatives for campaign-specific waste. Ad-group-level negatives to stop your own ad groups competing for the same term.

Get the match types right

Negative broad blocks any query containing all the words in any order. Negative phrase blocks the words in order. Negative exact blocks only that query. Broad is the blunt instrument — powerful and easy to over-apply, so check what it would have blocked before committing.

Watch for the terms you should be bidding on

The search terms report works both ways. Half the value is finding converting queries you haven't targeted explicitly, then giving them their own ad group with a matched ad and landing page.

Do it weekly, not monthly

Monthly review means up to four weeks of spend on a term you would have blocked immediately. In a $3,000-a-month account that is real money, and it compounds.

Keep a log of what you blocked and why

Six months on you will not remember why a term was excluded, and you'll waste time re-litigating it. It also makes handover to anyone else possible. It's a standing part of how we run Google Ads accounts — see also Google Ads for trades.