Negative keywords

Negative exact and negative phrase targets tell campaigns which queries never to enter. Two jobs: block irrelevance (traffic that clicks and cannot convert) and enforce structure (stopping broad and auto campaigns from cannibalizing queries your exact campaigns own at deliberate bids).

The routine matters more than the concept: a weekly search-term review that promotes converters to exact and demotes waste to negatives. Accounts audited after a year without this routine typically show 15–30% of spend on queries that never once converted — money that negative lists would have saved silently.