--- title: Find negative keywords for Google Ads description: Review the searches your Google Ads actually showed up for, pick out the ones that will never turn into customers, and turn them into negative keywords at the right match type and level so your budget goes to searches that convert. slug: /use-cases/google-ads-negative-keywords page_type: use-case lead_prompt: How do I find negative keywords for Google Ads with AI? target_prompts: - Can an AI marketing agent find negative keywords for Google Ads? - How do I review my Google Ads search terms report? - Which search terms should I exclude from my Google Ads? - Why are my Google Ads showing up for irrelevant searches? - How do I build a negative keyword list? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-11-10' date_modified: '2026-11-10' related_integrations: - /integrations/google-ads.md --- # Find negative keywords for Google Ads ## Key Takeaways - Negative keywords tell Google which searches not to show your ads for. You find them in the search terms report, which lists the real searches that triggered your ads along with what each one cost and whether it converted. - The right question for each search is who typed it and whether that person could ever buy from you. Job seekers, students, people looking for something free, and people trying to log in to a competitor's product rarely become customers, however close the words are to your keywords. - One negative keyword usually covers a whole group of bad searches. Excluding the word "jobs" blocks every search about jobs at once, so the work is finding the pattern, choosing the match type, and placing it at the right level of the account. - Kite reads your search terms, keywords, and existing negative keyword lists through your connected Google Ads account. It judges each search against what it knows about your products, pricing, and customers, then brings you a list of negatives sorted by where each one belongs. Your team adds them in Google Ads. - Kite reviews the new search terms every week, because broad match keeps finding new searches to show your ads for. It also checks that the negatives you added cut the waste without blocking searches that convert. ## Why your Google Ads show up for irrelevant searches Your Google Ads show up for irrelevant searches because Google matches your keywords to searches it considers related, not only to the exact words you chose. Broad match, Google's default setting for new keywords, gives it the most room. A keyword like "payroll software" can trigger your ad for "payroll software jobs," "free payroll calculator," or "how to become a payroll clerk." Each of those clicks costs you money, and none of those people are shopping for payroll software. Negative keywords are how you take that room back. A negative keyword is a word or phrase you've told Google not to show your ads for. Add "jobs" as a negative, and your ads stop appearing for any search that includes it. Finding the right negatives takes steady attention. You read the search terms report, decide which searches came from people who would never buy, spot the words they have in common, and add those words to the right campaign or list. Then you do it again next week, because Google keeps matching your keywords to new searches. In a busy account the report runs to hundreds or thousands of rows, and most teams get through the first page of it and stop. That reading is a good job for an AI agent. Each search needs a judgment, but the judgment comes from things an agent can know: what you sell, what it costs, who buys it, and who your competitors are. Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Here's how it finds the searches your ads should stay away from. ## How Kite finds negative keywords for Google Ads Kite starts with what it already knows about your business. Its research covers your products, pricing, customers, and competitors, so before it opens your ad account it knows who your buyer is and what kinds of searches they make. Next, it reads your Google Ads account. It pulls the search terms that triggered your ads over the period you choose, with the cost, clicks, and conversions for each one, and it reads the keywords and negative keywords you already have. It sorts every search term into three groups: searches to exclude, searches to keep, and searches that haven't had enough clicks to judge yet. From the searches to exclude, Kite works out the words and phrases they share. It turns those into negative keywords, picks a match type for each, and decides whether each one belongs in a single ad group, a campaign, or a list shared across campaigns. It checks that none of them would block a keyword you're paying for or a search that already converts. You get the list with a reason beside every entry. After your team adds the negatives, Kite reads the search terms again each week to confirm the waste went down and to catch the new searches that have crept in. ### How do you review your Google Ads search terms report? You review the search terms report by reading the actual searches that triggered your ads, not the keywords you bid on, and checking what each search cost and whether it led to a conversion. The keyword is what you told Google you wanted. The search term is what Google decided to show your ad for, and the gap between the two is where wasted spend hides. Kite reads the search terms for every campaign and ad group over the period you agree on. Thirty days is a common starting point for an account with steady traffic. A smaller account may need ninety days before individual searches have enough clicks to mean anything. For each search term, Kite records the campaign and ad group it ran in, the keyword that matched it, and its impressions, clicks, cost, and conversions. Kite sorts the list by cost first, because a search that cost $400 last month matters more than one that cost $2. Then it reads every row with spend, including the long tail of searches that each cost only a few dollars. Those small searches often add up to more money than the big ones, and they're the ones a person scanning the report never reaches. The report doesn't show every search. Google hides searches that too few people made, for privacy reasons, so part of your spend always sits outside the list. Kite tells you how much of your spend the visible search terms account for. If the hidden share is large, broader negatives built from the patterns Kite can see will catch some of the searches it can't. ### Which search terms should you exclude? Exclude the search terms that come from people who would never buy what you sell, even when the words look close to your keywords. Kite judges each search by asking who typed it and why, using what it knows about your products, pricing, and customers. Some groups of searches almost never turn into customers for a business selling a product or service: - **Job seekers.** Searches with "jobs," "salary," "careers," "hiring," or "internship" come from people looking for work, not for your product. - **Learners.** Searches like "how to become a payroll clerk," "payroll course," or "payroll certification" come from people studying the subject. - **Do-it-yourselfers.** Searches with "template," "DIY," or "how to do payroll yourself" often come from people trying to avoid paying for help. - **People looking for something free.** "Free payroll calculator" is a different shopper from someone comparing paid payroll software. - **Existing customers of someone else.** A search for "Gusto login" comes from someone trying to sign in to a product they already use. They clicked your ad by accident. - **The wrong product.** A search for "payroll card" or "payday loan" shares a word with your keyword and nothing else. What counts as irrelevant depends on your business, which is why Kite judges searches against your own research rather than a generic list. "Free" is a bad sign for a $300-a-month software product, but a search for "payroll software free trial" may be exactly the buyer you want if you offer a free trial. "Near me" is wasted money for a software company and a strong buying signal for a local accounting firm. Kite knows which of those describes you. Kite also uses your results. A search term that has spent more than your target cost per conversion without converting is a strong candidate to exclude, as long as it doesn't fit your buyer. A search that fits your buyer but hasn't converted yet goes in the group to keep watching, with a note about how much more spend it needs before the call is fair. And a search that converts well but isn't one of your keywords goes the other way. Kite suggests adding it as a keyword so you can bid on it directly and write an ad for it. ### Find the pattern behind the bad searches The most useful negative keywords exclude a pattern, not a single search. If your report shows twenty different searches about payroll jobs, adding each one as its own negative leaves the twenty-first to slip through next week. Adding "jobs" once covers all of them, along with every future search that uses the word. Kite groups the searches to exclude by the word or phrase that makes them irrelevant. It might find that "jobs," "salary," and "careers" together account for $1,100 of last month's spend across three campaigns, while "calculator" accounts for another $600. Each of those words becomes one negative keyword with a short note naming the searches it would have blocked and what they cost. Some searches don't reduce to one word. "Payroll card" is irrelevant, but "card" on its own might block a search like "payroll software that pays by card" that you'd want. In those cases Kite proposes the exact phrase instead of the single word. The goal is the smallest set of negatives that blocks the most waste without touching good searches. ### Choose the right match type and level for each negative Every negative keyword needs a match type and a place in the account, and both decide how much it blocks. Kite picks them for each negative and explains the choice. Negative keywords have three match types, and they work more strictly than the match types for the keywords you bid on: - **Negative broad match** blocks any search that contains all of the words, in any order. A negative broad keyword of "payroll jobs" blocks "jobs in payroll" and "remote payroll jobs," but not "accounting jobs," because that search doesn't contain both words. It's the right choice for single words like "jobs" or "salary." - **Negative phrase match** blocks any search that contains the words in that exact order, with other words allowed before or after. "Payroll card" as a phrase negative blocks "best payroll card" but leaves "payroll software card payments" alone. - **Negative exact match** blocks only that exact search, with nothing added. Use it when a search is wrong as a whole but its words are fine in other combinations. Negative keywords also don't stretch to cover close variants the way your bidding keywords do. A negative for "job" doesn't block "jobs," and a negative for "calculator" doesn't block "calculators." Kite adds the plural, the common misspellings, and other forms you'll need alongside each negative. Each negative also needs a home. A negative can sit in one ad group, in one campaign, in a negative keyword list that you attach to several campaigns, or in your account-level list, which applies across your campaigns at once. Kite matches the level to the reason. "Jobs" is irrelevant everywhere, so it goes in a shared list or at the account level. A search about payroll for restaurants might be a poor fit for your general campaign but exactly right for the campaign you built for restaurants, so that negative goes only on the general campaign. Kite reads the negative keyword lists you already have and which campaigns each one is attached to. If your list for job seekers covers two of your three search campaigns but not the newest one, Kite tells you to attach it rather than building a new list. ### Check that a negative won't block searches you want A negative keyword that's too broad can quietly switch off your own ads, so Kite checks every proposed negative against the account before it reaches you. The common mistake is excluding a word that also appears in searches you're paying to win. Kite runs three checks on each negative: - **Against your keywords.** If a negative would block one of your own keywords, such as a negative for "free" in a campaign that bids on "free trial payroll software," Kite flags the conflict and changes the match type or the level. - **Against searches that convert.** Kite tests each negative against the search terms that have brought in conversions. If "small" as a negative would have blocked "payroll for small business," which converts at your target cost, Kite drops it. - **Against your existing negatives.** Kite removes anything already covered by a negative you have, so your lists stay short enough for a person to read. Kite also looks the other way, at negatives already in your account. An old negative can block a search you now want. For example, you might have excluded "enterprise" two years ago and since launched an enterprise plan. Kite points out those leftovers along with the new negatives. ### Hand your team a list that's ready to add Kite brings you the negative keywords as one list, grouped by where each one goes, with the reason for every entry. Each line names the negative keyword, its match type written the way Google Ads expects it, the ad group, campaign, or list it belongs in, and the searches it would have blocked last period with their cost. You can read the list in a few minutes and strike anything you disagree with. When you push back on a call, such as keeping "template" because your team plans to publish a free template, Kite records the decision in your team's knowledge base, so later reviews leave that word alone. Your team adds the negatives in Google Ads. Kite reads your account and doesn't change campaigns, keywords, or lists in it. Because every line arrives with its match type and its destination already chosen, adding them is a matter of pasting the entries for each campaign or list into the right place. Kite can also save the list as a file if you'd rather work from a spreadsheet. **Related use cases** - [Cut wasted ad spend](/use-cases/cut-wasted-ad-spend.md): Find the campaigns, ad groups, and ads that spend money without bringing in results, and move that budget to what works. ### Review the search terms again every week Negative keywords aren't a one-time cleanup, because Google keeps matching your keywords to searches it hasn't shown your ads for before. Broad match in particular finds new territory every week, and a new campaign or keyword brings its own batch of surprises. You can put the review on a schedule. Every Monday, Kite reads the past week's search terms, compares them with the negatives already in place, and brings you only what's new: searches that have started spending without converting and searches that are worth adding as keywords. A quiet week produces a short list. You choose where the review goes: a Slack channel, your inbox, or a conversation in the Kite web app. Kite also checks whether the last round worked. It compares spend on the kinds of searches you excluded before and after the negatives went in, and it watches the cost per conversion of the campaigns you changed. If conversions dropped after a negative was added, Kite looks for a search it may have blocked by mistake and tells you which negative to loosen. **Related use cases** - [Build and manage Google Ads campaigns](/use-cases/google-ads-campaigns.md): Plan the keywords, ad groups, and ads for a new campaign, with a starting list of negatives, then keep improving it once it's running. ## What you get - **A read of your search terms.** Every search that triggered your ads over the period, sorted into searches to exclude, searches to keep, and searches that need more time, with the spend and conversions behind each call. - **A list of negative keywords.** Each negative with its match type, the ad group, campaign, or list it belongs in, the searches it would have blocked, and what those searches cost. - **A conflict check.** Any proposed negative that would have blocked one of your keywords or a converting search, and what Kite changed to avoid it, plus old negatives that now block searches you want. - **New keywords to bid on.** Searches that convert well but aren't yet keywords in your account. - **A weekly review.** The new searches that have started wasting money since last week, and whether the negatives you added cut spend without costing you conversions. ## How to get started Tell Kite what you want. You might ask, "Find the searches our Google Ads are wasting money on," or "Build us a negative keyword list for our search campaigns." You can work with Kite in the Kite web app or in Slack. Kite needs your Google Ads account for this job. It sends you a connection link the first time it needs one, and you sign in with the Google account that has access to your ads. If you sign in with a manager account, Kite asks which client account you mean. Kite then proposes the campaigns it plans to review and the date range it plans to read, so you can change either before it starts. If you have a target cost per conversion, tell Kite, and it uses that to judge which searches have spent enough to cut. It comes back with the list of negatives and the reason for each. Once you're happy with the first round, ask Kite to run the review every week. ## Integrations used to find negative keywords This job runs on your Google Ads account. Your account holds the searches your ads appeared for, what each one cost, and the keywords and negative keyword lists already in place. Kite combines that with its own research on your business to decide which searches to exclude. ### Read your search terms, keywords, and negative keyword lists - [Google Ads + Kite](/integrations/google-ads.md): Kite reads the search terms that triggered your ads with their cost and conversions, your keywords, the negatives on each campaign and ad group, and your shared negative keyword lists along with the campaigns each one is attached to. Your team adds the negatives Kite recommends in Google Ads. ## Common questions ### What symbol do you use to add a negative keyword? The minus sign marks a negative keyword, as in -jobs. The match type uses the same symbols as regular keywords: a phrase in quotation marks, such as -"payroll card", is a negative phrase match, and a phrase in square brackets, such as -[payroll certification], is a negative exact match. A negative with no quotation marks or brackets is negative broad match. When you add negatives in a campaign's negative keyword section or in a negative keyword list, you can leave out the minus sign, because Google already knows they're negatives. Kite writes every negative on its list with the quotation marks or brackets it needs. ### How do you add negative keywords in Google Ads? There are two common ways. From the search terms report, select the searches you want to exclude and choose to add them as negative keywords, then pick the ad group, campaign, or negative keyword list they belong in. Or open the negative keywords section of an ad group or campaign and paste in a list, one negative per line. To reuse the same negatives across several campaigns, create a negative keyword list in your shared library and attach it to each campaign. Kite's list tells you which of these places each negative belongs in. ### Should I add competitor names as negative keywords? It depends on whether you mean to bid on competitors. If you don't, add their brand names as negatives, because people searching for a competitor by name mostly want that product. Always exclude searches like "[competitor] login" or "[competitor] support," since those come from the competitor's existing customers trying to reach their account. If you do run competitor campaigns, keep the names as keywords there and add them as negatives in your other campaigns, so each search goes to the ad written for it. Kite knows your competitors from its research and asks which approach you want before it proposes anything. To find out which competitor searches are worth paying for, see [Find the search keywords your competitors pay for](/use-cases/competitor-ppc-keywords.md). ### Can I build a negative keyword list before a campaign launches? Yes, and it's worth doing. You won't have search terms yet, but you can predict many of the searches your keywords will drift into. Kite starts from your planned keywords, generates related keyword ideas through your Google Ads account, and picks out the ones your buyers would never search for, such as the job, education, and free-tool searches around your category. Those become a starting negative keyword list for launch day. The weekly review then catches the searches nobody predicted. ### Can Kite add the negative keywords to Google Ads for me? Not yet. Kite reads your Google Ads account and doesn't change campaigns, keywords, or negative keyword lists in it. It does the part that takes the time: reading every search term, deciding which to exclude, choosing the match type and level, and checking for conflicts. Your team adds the finished list in Google Ads, which usually takes a few minutes per campaign.