Negative keywords: how to build your lists, plus a starter list to copy

Negative keywords are one of the main controls you have to stop irrelevant queries from draining budget, and they do not behave like positive keywords in reverse. This guide walks through how negative match types work, how to structure lists and account-level controls, how they interact with Performance Max, and a practical framework for building and adapting your own negative keyword categories.

How negative match types behave and how they differ from positives

Negative match types in Google Ads have their own rules and do not mirror positive match behavior. Google states that negative keywords do not match to close variants or other expansions, so a negative broad keyword like flowers will block searches containing flowers such as red flowers, but your ad can still show on red flower unless you add that form separately.

This corrects the misconception that negatives work like positive keywords in reverse. With positives, close variants and similar forms can match, but with negatives, synonyms, singulars, and plurals must be added separately if you want them blocked. Negative broad match is the default, and per Google, it blocks searches containing all the negative terms in any order, while negative phrase and exact require the terms in the same order, with phrase allowing extra words and exact allowing no extra words.

Google also documents a 16-word rule: if your negative keyword appears after the 16th word in a very long query, your ad can still show. This matters when you see long, descriptive queries in the search terms report, because a negative that appears late in the query may not block that impression or click.

What negatives cover automatically and what they do not

Google's help pages state that negative keywords automatically account for casing and misspellings. You do not need separate entries for capitalized versions or common typos, which corrects the misconception that you must add misspellings of every negative keyword.

However, negatives do not expand to close variants or other expansions. This means plurals, singulars, and synonyms are not covered unless you add them explicitly. For example, if you add negative broad job, that will not automatically block jobs or a synonym like career; each form must be added on its own if you want it excluded.

Google also documents symbol handling for negatives. Ampersands, accents, and asterisks are recognized, periods are ignored, most other symbols are invalid, and a leading minus sign on a word causes that word to be ignored. When you build lists, keep terms clean and avoid relying on punctuation to control matching.

Negative keyword lists, limits, and where lists apply

Negative keyword lists are shared sets of negatives that you can apply to multiple campaigns. Google states that editing a list updates every campaign using it, which is how you centralize exclusions such as job-seeker terms or competitor names across many campaigns without duplicating work.

Per Google's documented limits, each negative keyword list can contain up to 5,000 keywords, and you can have up to 20 negative lists per account. At the campaign level, you can add up to 10,000 negative keywords. For Display and Video, Google notes that a maximum of 1,000 negatives are considered, which caps how many of your exclusions can influence contextual matching on those networks.

This corrects the misconception that one negative list covers the whole account by default. Standard negative lists must be attached to each campaign where you want them to apply. The shared list mechanism is separate from the account-level negative feature, and you manage it from the shared library or equivalent section in the interface.

Account-level negative keywords and their coverage

Google provides an account-level negative keyword feature that lives in account settings. Per Google's documentation, you can add up to 1,000 keywords to this global list, and they apply automatically to search and shopping inventory across Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart, and Local campaigns.

Match types in the account-level list are editable among broad, phrase, and exact, with the same negative match behavior described earlier. This global list is the only negative construct that applies across eligible campaign types without attaching a shared list per campaign.

This again corrects the misconception that a standard negative list covers the whole account. The account-level list is the single global container Google documents, and it is capped at 1,000 keywords, so you reserve it for your highest priority exclusions, such as legal blocks or categories that must never receive traffic.

Performance Max negatives and when to use brand exclusions

Google documents that Performance Max supports campaign-level negative keywords. The feature rolled out in January 2025 with a 100-keyword limit and was later raised to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign, with support for negative keyword lists added in August 2025. These negatives apply to the Search and Shopping inventory within Performance Max.

This corrects the misconception that Performance Max cannot be controlled with negatives. You can now attach shared negative lists or add campaign-level negatives, within the same limits that apply to other campaigns, to control which queries your PMax Search and Shopping inventory can show on.

For brand traffic, Google documents brand exclusions as the better option than negative keywords. Brand exclusions in Performance Max apply to Search, Shopping, and YouTube search inventory, and they are documented to catch misspellings and foreign-script variants of the brand, including your own, in ways that negatives do not. For a full picture of other Performance Max controls beyond negatives, see this overview of Performance Max controls.

Using the search terms report to build negative lists

Google's search terms report is the primary source for negative keyword ideas. The report only shows terms used by a significant number of people, for privacy reasons, so you will not see every low-volume query, but it is still the most direct view of where your spend is going.

Google documents that when you add a negative keyword directly from the search terms report, it defaults to exact match. If you want broader blocking behavior, you must edit the match type to phrase or broad after adding, or add a separate broad or phrase negative manually.

TF's stated practice is to mine the search terms report on a regular cadence as a core step in its audit sequence, build category-level exclusions rather than one-off terms, and adapt starter categories to the business. For where the search terms review fits in a full account review, see this Google Ads audit sequence.

Google also provides a workflow in help content titled "Get negative keyword ideas using the search terms report" that formalizes this process. You review search terms, identify irrelevant or low-value intent, and add those as negatives, grouping them into lists that reflect broader categories such as job seekers, support queries, or incompatible geographies.

A starter negative framework and how to adapt it

Google does not publish any starter negative keyword list, and all list content is left to the advertiser. TF's position is that a term that is waste for one client is the product for another, which is why TF does not believe in universal copy-paste lists and instead uses a category framework that is adapted per business.

As a starting framework, you can think in categories and then fill each with example terms from your own search terms report. For example, a "job seeker" category might include negatives such as jobs, careers, and internship if you are not recruiting. A "support" category might include login, reset password, or customer service if your campaigns are focused on acquisition rather than existing customer support.

Other categories you might define include incompatible locations, if you do not serve certain regions, and informational research terms if your campaigns are optimized only for high-intent commercial queries. Because Google documents that negatives do not expand to close variants, you should add singulars, plurals, and clear synonyms within each category, for example both job and jobs, or both free and no cost where those are irrelevant to your paid offering.

TF's stated practice is to use negatives as intent-vertical guardrails for B2B accounts, where structure defines who you want and negatives enforce who you do not. If you work at scale and need to automate mining of search terms into these categories, you can explore scripting approaches such as those described in this overview of Google Ads scripts.

Temper And Forge's stated practice is that negatives are part of how TF protects the spend math, because every irrelevant click erodes the ROAS that decides whether a campaign lives. TF mines the search terms report on a regular cadence as a core audit step, builds category-level exclusions rather than one-off terms, adapts starter categories to each business, and uses negatives as intent-vertical guardrails in B2B accounts so that structure defines who you want and negatives enforce who you do not.