What are Negative Keywords?
Negative keywords are specific words or phrases you add to your Google Ads campaign to prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant searches. By excluding certain terms, you can ensure your ads don’t appear for searches unrelated to your business.
Why are Negative Keywords Important?
Negative keywords help improve the quality of traffic to your campaign, reduce wasted ad spend, and increase your return on investment (ROI) by preventing your ads from being shown to users who are unlikely to convert or low-quality leads.
How Long Does It Take for Negative Keywords to Take Effect?
It can take up to 14 days for Google to stop showing your ads for searches containing negative keywords after they've been added to your campaign.
What Should I Do If I Keep Receiving Irrelevant Leads?
If you receive leads (inquiries from your ad campaigns) that are interested in things you do not offer, notify your advisor and provide details on the search queries that generated them. This helps our team further refine the negative keywords or submit a ticket to Google on your behalf if needed.
What Happens If I Add Too Many Negative Keywords?
While negative keywords are important, adding too many can limit your reach, especially if they are too broad or restrictive. Our team regularly monitors your performance to ensure negative keywords are used effectively to attract quality leads.
Types of Negative Keywords:
Negative Exact Match: Your ad won't show if the search query exactly matches the negative keyword.
Negative Phrase Match: Your ad won't show if the search query contains the negative keyword or close variations of it.
Negative Broad Match: Your ad won't show if the search query includes the negative keyword in any order or form, including synonyms and related terms.
How Identity Leverages Negative Keywords.
We use negative keywords to filter out irrelevant or low-quality leads, ensuring your ads target relevant audiences. This helps optimize your ad spend by preventing impressions and clicks from users who are unlikely to convert or are low-quality/irrelevant leads. With many years of experience in Google advertising, we have a proprietary process for identifying the right negative keywords based on your individual goals and practice model. We also have a process allowing us to continually monitor and refine your marketing strategy, even without your verbal feedback. Please know our ads team is continually working to improve your campaign.