Posted on: April 23, 2008
Negative keywords are very important when you are using broad match and even phrase match in Google AdWords. For those of you who are not clear about the differences between the different types of matching, here's a quick rundown.
Match types in Google AdWords
Broad match - when you want to capture the broadest number of searches, use broad matching, i.e. type in your keywords or phrases without any quotes or square brackets. So for example, if you enter the phrase - chili peppers - your ad will potentially be shown when someone is searching for red hot chili peppers or peppers you can use in chili or chili with green peppers. Word order does not matter in broad matching. There can be extra words in the search string between the two words you specified or the two words can be switched in order and it will still be a match.
Phrase match - For phrase matching, you will enter your keywords with quotes, like “chili peppers”. Your ad will appear when the search phrase CONTAINS your specified phrase. So something like “red hot chili peppers” will trigger your ad but not “peppers with chili”.
Exact match - Using this matching option will narrow down the most searches as your ad will only be shown if the phrase is typed exactly without any additional words before, after or in between. You will use square brackets to enclose your phrase, e.g. [chili peppers].
Negative keywords
Negative keywords are important because they filter out searches that you don't want to trigger your ad. So if you're selling “chili peppers” you don't want people searching for Red Hot Chili Peppers lyrics or the band seeing your ads. You can include lyrics, band and song as some of your negative keywords.
Negative keywords are specified with the ‘-' (negative) sign in front of them.
You can also get negative keyword ideas by visiting the ‘keyword tool' link within your account when you are creating a new ad group or editing one. This link is visible when you are under the ‘keywords' tab.
Type in ‘chili peppers' into the search field and the system will generate a list of search words/phrases along with the popularity of the terms. This is one of the ways I use to find out what negative keywords I should be using.
Using negative keywords can help you cut down on unnecessary costs of spending on clicks that are unwanted while at the same time casting your net far and wide.
Finally, if you don't want to bother with negative keywords, then use only exact matching. You will cut down on the volume of clicks to your ads but you can be sure that only the people you want seeing your ad will actually see it.
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