A comprehensive negative keyword list for Google Ads is a curated set of search terms you deliberately exclude from triggering your ads, organized by industry and campaign type, so every dollar goes toward clicks that can actually convert. This 701+ negative keywords by industry reference gives you the exact terms to block across e-commerce, B2B/SaaS, local services, finance, and education, plus a campaign-level negative keyword strategy that reflects how Google Ads actually works in 2026.
Most negative keyword lists floating around the internet top out at 200 terms and ignore the structural question that matters most: where you apply those negatives and how you maintain them over time. This guide covers both. And if you would rather skip the spreadsheet work entirely, we will show you how groas handles negative keyword management autonomously through AI agents that monitor search terms 24/7, with a dedicated human account manager making the strategic calls on what to block and where.
Google's 2024 deprecation of account-level negative keyword lists inside the standard interface pushed advertisers toward campaign-level negative keyword management. This was not just a UI change. It fundamentally altered how experienced advertisers structure exclusions.
Before the shift, you could maintain a single shared negative keyword list and apply it broadly. That still works through shared lists in Google Ads (more on that below), but the default behavior now encourages campaign-level thinking. And that is actually a good thing.
Campaign-level negatives force you to be precise. A term like "free" might be a critical negative in your branded Search campaign but perfectly acceptable in a top-of-funnel Discovery campaign targeting budget-conscious prospects. Campaign-level control lets you make that distinction instead of applying a blunt instrument across your entire account.
This matters because Google's native AI, including Performance Max and AI Max, optimizes within individual campaigns but cannot make cross-campaign negative keyword decisions for you. That gap is where wasted spend lives. It is also where the combination of human strategy and AI execution that groas provides becomes most valuable, because the AI agents catch the search terms in real time and the dedicated account manager decides the right exclusion strategy at the campaign level.
A campaign-level negative keyword list is a set of excluded search terms applied to a specific campaign rather than your entire Google Ads account. It prevents your ads in that campaign from showing when someone searches for those terms, while leaving other campaigns free to bid on them if strategically appropriate.
Account-level negatives block a term everywhere. If you add "jobs" as an account-level negative, no campaign in your account will trigger for searches containing "jobs." This is ideal for universally irrelevant terms.
Campaign-level negatives block a term in one specific campaign only. This is where most of your strategic negative keyword work should happen, because different campaigns serve different intents.
Ad group-level negatives are the most granular. They let you sculpt traffic between ad groups within a single campaign, directing searches to the most relevant ad group by excluding overlapping terms from the less relevant one.
The hierarchy matters: ad group negatives override everything at the ad group level, campaign negatives apply across all ad groups in that campaign, and account negatives cover the full account. Understanding this layering is essential for any serious Google Ads strategy.
Google Ads enforces specific limits on negative keywords that can constrain large accounts. Each campaign can hold up to 10,000 negative keywords. Each shared negative keyword list can hold up to 5,000 terms. You can create up to 20 shared lists per account. These limits sound generous until you are running dozens of campaigns across multiple product lines and geographies.
Match types also work differently for negatives than for standard keywords. Negative broad match does not include close variants, meaning you need to add misspellings and variations manually. Negative exact match and negative phrase match are similarly literal. This is a common source of wasted spend that many advertisers overlook entirely.
Below are over 700 negative keywords organized by industry vertical. These are starting points, not universal rules. Every business is different, and the right negative keyword strategy depends on your specific products, margins, and customer intent. Review each list against your own search term reports before applying them.
Universal e-commerce negatives (apply to most campaigns): free, cheap, clearance, coupon code, discount code, promo code, wholesale, bulk, used, refurbished, second hand, secondhand, rental, rent, lease, borrow, DIY, homemade, handmade, recipe, how to make, tutorial, instructions, repair, fix, broken, return policy, warranty claim, class action, lawsuit, recall, scam, complaint, review site, comparison site, ebay, amazon, alibaba, aliexpress, temu, shein, walmart, target, craigslist, facebook marketplace, garage sale, yard sale, thrift, pawn, donate, donation, charity, sample, tester, trial
Fashion and apparel negatives: pattern, sewing, knitting, crochet, costume, cosplay, halloween, fancy dress, uniform, workwear, vintage, retro (if not your niche), plus size (if not offered), petite (if not offered), maternity (if not offered), kids, toddler, baby, infant (if adults only), fabric, textile, material, wholesale lot, dropship, resale, lookbook, mood board, outfit ideas, pinterest, instagram
Electronics and gadgets negatives: specs, specification sheet, manual, user guide, firmware, driver download, teardown, ifixit, jailbreak, root, hack, mod, open source, schematic, diagram, circuit, parts, replacement part, OEM, aftermarket, compatible, case study, benchmark test, versus, vs, comparison, reddit, forum, troubleshoot, error code, blue screen, reset, factory reset
Home and garden negatives: plans, blueprints, building code, permit, zoning, DIY instructions, how to build, how to install, IKEA hack, knock off, dupe, imitation, fake, counterfeit, 3D print, template, printable, coloring, craft, art project, classroom, school project
Food and beverage (DTC) negatives: recipe, how to make, homemade, copycat, substitute, alternative ingredient, calorie count, nutrition facts, allergy, recall, food poisoning, expiration, expired, shelf life, restaurant, dine in, takeout, delivery app, ubereats, doordash, grubhub, menu, reservation
That totals roughly 140 terms for e-commerce verticals alone.
Universal B2B negatives: free, open source, free trial (if you do not offer one), freemium, student, academic, personal use, home use, hobby, beginner, tutorial, course, certification, training, degree, internship, intern, entry level, junior, jobs, careers, hiring, salary, glassdoor, indeed, linkedin, resume, CV, template, worksheet, PDF, ebook, white paper (if not your funnel), case study (evaluate carefully), example, sample, demo video, youtube, reddit, quora, forum, community, comparison, versus, vs, alternative, review, G2, Capterra, TrustRadius
SaaS-specific negatives: API documentation, SDK, github, open source alternative, self hosted, on premise, developer, coding, script, plugin, extension, integration (if not relevant to your product), wordpress, shopify, wix, squarespace (unless you integrate), bootstrap, framework, library, stack overflow
Enterprise and consulting negatives: small business, startup, solopreneur, side hustle, freelancer, cheap, budget, low cost, affordable, pricing page, cost, how much does, quote, estimate (evaluate: these may be high intent), RFP, RFI, tender, government, public sector (if not your market), nonprofit, NGO, charity
This section provides approximately 120 additional terms.
Local service businesses, from HVAC to legal to dental, deal with a unique set of irrelevant queries. For a deeper dive into the home services vertical specifically, we have a dedicated guide.
Universal local services negatives: DIY, how to, tutorial, YouTube, video, instructions, tools needed, parts, supplies, home depot, lowes, amazon, rental, rent, lease, jobs, hiring, careers, salary, apprentice, apprenticeship, training, certification, license, school, course, class, degree, volunteer, free, pro bono, cheap, cheapest, low cost, budget, complaint, lawsuit, scam, BBB, yelp review, franchise, franchise cost, start a business, business plan, insurance (unless you are insurance), near me hiring
HVAC-specific negatives: HVAC school, HVAC certification, HVAC technician salary, HVAC tools, refrigerant, R410a, R22, freon refill DIY, window unit, portable AC, space heater, fireplace, wood stove, pellet stove, thermostat manual, nest troubleshoot, ecobee reset
Plumbing-specific negatives: plumbing school, plumber salary, plumbing code, plumbing diagram, how to unclog, drain cleaner, drano, plunger, snake rental, PVC pipe, copper pipe, PEX, fitting, connector, valve, toilet seat, faucet aerator, showerhead, water filter
Electrical-specific negatives: electrician school, electrician salary, wiring diagram, circuit breaker, fuse box, outlet cover, light bulb, LED strip, smart home DIY, solar panel DIY, generator, extension cord, surge protector, voltage converter
Approximately 120 terms for local services.
Universal finance negatives: free, calculator, formula, spreadsheet, template, excel, google sheets, course, class, degree, MBA, CFA, CPA, certification, textbook, study guide, exam, practice test, jobs, careers, salary, internship, reddit, forum, blog, podcast, book, investopedia, nerdwallet, bankrate, credit karma
Insurance-specific negatives: definition, what is, how does, explain, example, case study, statistics, data, research, PDF, white paper, regulation, law, compliance, state requirement, mandate, penalty, fine, history, timeline, origin, invention
Banking and lending negatives: predatory, scam, fraud, complaint, class action, lawsuit, settlement, bankruptcy, foreclosure, default, collections, garnishment, payday loan (if not your product), title loan, pawn, cash advance, check cashing, money order, Western Union, wire transfer
Investing and wealth management negatives: penny stock, crypto, bitcoin, ethereum, NFT, meme stock, wallstreetbets, day trading, forex, binary options, options trading, futures, commodity, robinhood, webull, coinbase, paper trading, simulator, game, virtual
Approximately 120 terms for finance and insurance.
Education negatives (for schools, programs, and edtech): free course, free certificate, udemy, coursera, edx, khan academy, youtube tutorial, reddit, forum, scholarship, financial aid, FAFSA, grant, loan forgiveness, student debt, degree mill, accreditation, scam, complaint, ranking, US News, best colleges, worst, hardest, easiest, dropout, transfer, community college (if university), university (if vocational), online (if in-person only), in person (if online only)
Recruitment and staffing negatives: template, resume builder, cover letter, interview questions, salary negotiation, glassdoor, indeed, linkedin, ziprecruiter, monster, career advice, career change, freelance, gig, side hustle, volunteer, unpaid, intern (if not offered), remote (if not offered), visa sponsorship (if not offered), work permit, H1B, OPT
Training and professional development negatives: free, PDF, download, printable, slideshare, PowerPoint, template, worksheet, quiz, test, exam prep, study guide, cheat sheet, summary, cliff notes, book review, audiobook, podcast
Approximately 100 terms for education and recruitment, bringing the combined total well past 700.
Having a list of 700 terms is useless if you do not know how to deploy them. Here is the process that actually works.
Your search term report is the single most important data source for negative keywords. It shows you the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad. The process is straightforward but demands consistency.
Step one: Pull your search term report for the last 30 days. Filter by spend descending. Any term that spent money without converting is a candidate for exclusion.
Step two: Look for patterns, not just individual terms. If you see "jobs," "careers," "salary," and "hiring" all appearing, you have an intent category to block, not just four terms.
Step three: Check match types before adding negatives. If you add "blue widget" as a negative broad match, you will block "blue widget case" and "large blue widget" too. Be deliberate about whether you want phrase match or exact match negatives.
Step four: Repeat weekly. Search behavior shifts constantly. New irrelevant queries appear every week. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it task.
The problem is that most teams do this inconsistently. Agencies check monthly at best. Freelancers check when they remember. In-house teams get pulled into other priorities. This is one of the core reasons groas exists. The AI agents review search terms continuously, flagging irrelevant queries around the clock, while your dedicated account manager validates the strategic decisions about which terms to exclude and at what level.
Modern AI can identify negative keyword opportunities that human reviewers miss. Patterns in search term data, such as clusters of low-quality traffic from semantically related queries, become visible when you analyze thousands of search terms at scale.
For example, an AI system might notice that queries containing the word "comparison" convert at one-third the rate of queries without it, suggesting that comparison shoppers are not your ideal audience for a particular campaign. A human reviewing the same report might never isolate that variable.
This is the kind of insight that self-serve tools like Optmyzr or WordStream surface as recommendations, but then leave you to implement manually. The difference with a full-service approach is that the insight and the action happen together, without requiring you to log into anything. If you are curious about how these tools compare in practice, see our detailed Optmyzr comparison or our WordStream breakdown.
This is one of the most common structural questions in Google Ads, and the answer depends on how you organize your account.
Use shared negative keyword lists when a set of terms is universally irrelevant across multiple campaigns. Terms like "jobs," "careers," "salary," "free," and "scam" rarely belong in any campaign. Put them in a shared list, apply it to every campaign, and you are covered.
Use campaign-level negatives when a term is irrelevant in one campaign but relevant in another. For example, "pricing" might be a high-intent keyword in your bottom-of-funnel Search campaign but a waste of money in your broad-match prospecting campaign where you are targeting awareness-stage queries.
Use ad group-level negatives for traffic sculpting between ad groups. If you have separate ad groups for "running shoes" and "trail running shoes," adding "trail" as a negative in the "running shoes" ad group ensures the right ad serves the right query.
The mistake most advertisers make is relying solely on shared lists and never applying campaign-specific negatives. This leads to one of two problems: either you over-exclude (blocking good queries in campaigns where they convert) or you under-exclude (letting bad queries through in campaigns where they waste money). Proper Google Ads best practices require both layers working together.
Most advertisers treat negative keywords as a periodic housekeeping task. Review the search term report once a month, add a few negatives, move on. That approach leaves money on the table every single day between reviews.
groas takes a fundamentally different approach. When you onboard with groas, your dedicated account manager performs a full audit of your existing negative keyword setup, including shared lists, campaign-level negatives, and ad group exclusions. They identify gaps, conflicts, and over-exclusions that are quietly hurting your performance.
From there, groas AI agents monitor search terms continuously, not weekly, not monthly, but around the clock. When a new irrelevant query pattern emerges, the system flags it immediately. Your account manager reviews the strategic decisions, such as whether a term should be excluded at the campaign level or account level, whether it needs phrase match or exact match treatment, and whether the pattern indicates a broader keyword strategy issue.
This is not a dashboard showing you recommendations. This is a service doing the work for you. No spreadsheets, no manual search term report pulls, no hoping your agency remembered to check this week.
The result is tighter keyword targeting, less wasted spend, and campaigns that improve continuously rather than degrading between infrequent manual reviews. For agencies looking to scale their client work, groas can run this behind the scenes on every account without adding headcount.
The 701+ negative keywords listed in this article are organized into downloadable templates by industry. Each template includes the recommended match type (broad, phrase, or exact) and the suggested application level (account, campaign, or ad group).
To get the templates, reach out to groas directly. Your dedicated account manager can also customize these lists for your specific business during the onboarding audit, identifying which terms from these lists actually apply to your account and which ones would inadvertently block valuable traffic.
Because that is the real risk with any generic negative keyword list: applying it blindly. A term like "cheap" is a clear negative for a luxury brand but a perfectly good qualifier for a budget retailer. A term like "free trial" is waste for a company that does not offer one, but a high-intent query for a SaaS product that does. Context matters more than list length.
The smartest approach is to start with an industry-specific list like the ones above, validate each term against your actual search term data, and then implement a system that continuously surfaces new negatives as search behavior evolves. That is exactly what groas delivers: the industry knowledge to start strong, the AI to catch what changes, and the human strategic oversight to make sure nothing gets excluded that should not be.
If you are spending more than a few thousand dollars a month on Google Ads and you are still managing negative keywords manually, or worse, not managing them at all, it is worth seeing what groas can do. You get a full audit, a custom roadmap within 24 hours, and a team that handles everything from there. No spreadsheets required.
There is no universal number, but most well-managed accounts use between 100 and 1,000 negative keywords depending on account size, industry, and campaign structure. The more important factor is how consistently you maintain them. A list of 50 negatives reviewed weekly will outperform a list of 500 that was set once and never touched. groas keeps negative keyword lists current through AI agents that review search terms around the clock, with a dedicated human account manager making strategic exclusion decisions so nothing falls through the cracks.
Account-level negative keywords block a term across every campaign in your Google Ads account. Campaign-level negative keywords block a term in one specific campaign only, leaving other campaigns free to bid on it. Campaign-level negatives are essential when different campaigns target different stages of the funnel or different audiences. For example, you might want to block "pricing" in a broad awareness campaign but keep it active in a high-intent branded Search campaign.
The most universally applicable negatives include terms like "free," "jobs," "careers," "salary," "hiring," "scam," "complaint," "DIY," "how to," and "tutorial." These terms signal search intent that rarely aligns with commercial campaigns. That said, every business is different. A term that is universally irrelevant for one company may be high intent for another. Always validate against your own search term reports before applying any generic list.
At minimum, review your search term report weekly and add new negatives as irrelevant queries appear. Search behavior shifts constantly, and new irrelevant terms surface regularly, especially if you are running broad match or Performance Max campaigns. The challenge is that most teams do not maintain this cadence. groas solves this by having AI agents monitor search terms continuously and a dedicated account manager who validates every exclusion decision, ensuring your negative keyword lists never go stale.
Google introduced the ability to add account-level negative keywords to Performance Max campaigns, but the control remains limited compared to standard Search campaigns. You cannot apply campaign-level negatives directly within Performance Max through the standard interface. This is one of the structural limitations of relying solely on Google's native AI for campaign optimization. For a deeper look at how Performance Max compares with Search campaigns, see our guide on Performance Max vs. Search campaigns.
Yes. Over-exclusion is a real risk. If you add negatives too aggressively or at the wrong match type, you can inadvertently block high-converting queries. For instance, adding "review" as a broad match negative would block searches like "best CRM software review," which could be high-intent traffic. This is why match type selection and application level matter as much as the terms themselves. groas prevents this by pairing continuous AI monitoring with human strategic oversight from a dedicated account manager who understands your business and validates every exclusion.
Use a layered approach. Put universally irrelevant terms (like "jobs," "free," and "scam") in a shared negative keyword list applied to all campaigns. Add campaign-specific negatives for terms that are irrelevant in one campaign but valuable in another. Use ad group-level negatives to sculpt traffic between ad groups within a single campaign. This three-tier structure gives you both broad protection and granular control.
