What is Negative Keyword?

Negative Keywords are an important part of every campaign because they help make sure that your ads appear only to people looking for what you offer. This added level of control can help you increase your clickthrough rate (CTR), reduce your average cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

A type of keyword that prevents your ad from being triggered by a certain word or phrase. It tells Google not to show your ad to anyone who is searching for that phrase.

• For example, when you add "free" as a negative keyword to your campaign or ad group, you tell AdWords not to show your ad for any search containing the term "free." On the Display Network, your ad is less likely to appear on a site when your negative keywords match the site's content.
• A similar term is negative match, one of the four keyword matching options that is used to describe negative keywords.
• Add negative keywords on the Keywords tab by clicking "Negative keywords" below the main table.
•  Negative keywords are an important part of every campaign because they help make sure that your ads appear only to people looking for what you offer. This added level of control can help you increase your click through rate (CTR), reduce your average cost-per-click (CPC), and increase your ROI.

Negative keywords are often necessary for paid search campaigns that contain keywords on either broad match or phrase match. These match types will display your ad for additional search queries (i.e. search queries other than the actual keyword that was added to the account). Thus, removing irrelevant terms often becomes necessary.

An additional use for negative keywords is to funnel traffic to the most high converting and optimized campaign or ad group for a particular search query. For example, let's say that you advertise for both laptop and desktop computers and that you have ad copy that is specific to each. You may notice that some searchers who are searching for laptops are being showed desktop ads and vice versa. Negative keywords can be used to make sure that each searcher is showed the most relevant ad copy that is most likely to convert into a sale.