Glossary
What are negative keywords in Google Ads?
Melvin Salas1 min readVerified 16 October 2026
Short answer
Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns. Unlike your other keywords, they won't match to close variants or other expansions, so Google says you'll need to add synonyms and singular or plural versions if you want to exclude them. They automatically account for casing and misspellings.
Google's own example: exclude the negative broad match keyword flowers, and ads won't be eligible to serve when a user searches red flowers, but can serve if a user searches for red flower.
Search campaigns can use three negative match types. Negative broad match is the default for your negative keywords: your ad won't show if the search contains all your negative keyword terms, even if the terms are in a different order. Negative phrase match blocks searches that contain the exact keyword terms in the same order, and the search may include additional words. Negative exact match blocks the exact keyword terms, in the same order, without extra words.
One door has a different default. Google says negative keywords added to a Search campaign from the search terms report are added as negative exact match.
Display and Video campaigns treat them differently. Google says that for display campaigns a set of negative keywords will be excluded as an exact topic, and that for Display and Video ads a maximum of 1,000 negative keywords is considered at the account level.
Google also warns that if you use too many negative keywords, your ads might reach fewer customers.
Our practice: when we exclude a word, we write its plural and its synonyms as separate negatives, and we leave out its misspellings, which Google already covers.
We start where the spend actually goes
Riibon reads the search terms behind the spend, not only the keywords that were bought, and treats every negative keyword as a change with its own risk rather than as housekeeping.
Ask the Riibon app where your search spend is really going. Access starts with a short call: we look at your ads together, then run them for you or set the app up with you.