Most Google Ads accounts leak money quietly. Not through dramatic mistakes, but through a steady drip of clicks from people who were never going to become customers: job hunters, DIYers, bargain browsers, and searchers in cities you do not serve. Negative keywords are how you plug those leaks, and for many local businesses they are the single quickest improvement available. Unlike bidding strategy or ad copy, negatives require no creativity and no testing period. You find the waste, you block it, and the savings start immediately.
What are negative keywords, exactly?
A negative keyword tells Google which searches you do NOT want your ads to appear for. If you run a plumbing company and add "jobs" as a negative, your ad stops showing for searches like "plumbing jobs Vancouver." You still bid on all your normal keywords; you are simply carving away the irrelevant edges.
This matters because modern match types are loose by design. A phrase match keyword like "furnace repair" can trigger your ad for "furnace repair training course" or "how to repair furnace yourself." Google casts a wide net, and negatives are the tool you use to cut holes in that net exactly where you want them.
Where does wasted Google Ads spend actually hide?
After auditing enough local service accounts, the same categories of waste show up again and again:
- Job seekers. Searches containing "jobs," "careers," "hiring," "salary," "resume," and "apprenticeship" attract clicks from people looking for work, not service.
- DIY researchers. Terms with "how to," "DIY," "yourself," "tutorial," and "video" signal someone planning to do the work on their own.
- Wrong-city searches. If you serve New Westminster and Burnaby but your ads show for searches mentioning Kelowna or Victoria, every one of those clicks is wasted. Location settings help, but search terms with other city names still slip through.
- Cheap and free hunters. Queries containing "free," "cheapest," and "coupon" tend to attract clicks that rarely turn into good customers for premium service businesses.
- Product and parts shoppers. Someone searching "furnace blower motor for sale" wants a part, not an HVAC contractor.
- Students and information seekers. Words like "course," "certification," "school," and "wikipedia" flag research intent with no purchase behind it.
Each click looks small, but multiplied across months these categories can quietly consume a meaningful slice of a local budget.
How do I find wasted spend in the search terms report?
The search terms report shows the actual queries people typed before clicking your ad, and it is where negatives are mined. In Google Ads, open a campaign, then go to Insights and reports, then Search terms. You can also review Google's own walkthrough in the Google Ads help resources.
Work through the report like this:
- Sort by cost, highest first. Waste hiding in expensive queries hurts most, so start there.
- Read each term and ask one question: would a good customer type this? If the answer is no, note which word made it irrelevant.
- Add the offending word, not the whole phrase. If "furnace repair apprenticeship vancouver" wasted money, the negative you want is "apprenticeship," which blocks every future variation, not just that exact string.
- Look for patterns across weeks. One odd search is noise. The same irrelevant theme appearing repeatedly is a leak worth sealing.
Do this weekly for a new campaign; the first few sessions usually surface the bulk of the waste.
How to add negative keywords the right way
Adding negatives is straightforward: from the search terms report, tick the box next to a bad query and choose "Add as negative keyword," or go to the Keywords section, select Negative search keywords, and enter them manually. The part that trips people up is match types, which behave differently for negatives than for regular keywords.
- Negative broad match blocks any search containing all your negative words in any order. Adding the negative "jobs" blocks "plumber jobs" and "jobs plumbing burnaby." This is the workhorse for single-word negatives.
- Negative phrase match blocks searches containing your exact phrase in order. Useful for multi-word blocks like "do it yourself."
- Negative exact match blocks only that precise search. Rarely the right choice for local accounts because it is too narrow to cover variations.
Two cautions. First, negatives do not automatically catch close variants the way regular keywords do, so consider adding plurals and common misspellings, such as both "job" and "jobs." Second, be careful with words that appear in good searches too. Blocking "cheap" is usually safe for premium services, but blocking "cost" would also block "furnace replacement cost," which is often a genuine buyer researching.
A starter negative keywords list for local service businesses
Every account needs its own list built from real search data, but this starter set covers the usual suspects for trades and local services. Add these as negative broad match at the campaign level, minus any that conflict with your actual offers:
- Employment: jobs, job, careers, hiring, salary, wage, resume, apprenticeship, union
- DIY and research: diy, how, tutorial, youtube, video, guide, manual, instructions
- Education: course, courses, training, school, certification, certificate, exam
- Bargain intent: free, cheapest, coupon, craigslist, marketplace, used
- Parts and products: parts, supply, supplies, wholesale, for sale, rental
- Out-of-area cities: every major BC city you do not serve
Review the list before applying it. A company that genuinely sells parts, offers rentals, or runs a training arm would need to keep those words. If you would rather have a second set of eyes on your account structure, our PPC management team reviews search term waste as a standard part of every audit.
What should a weekly negative keyword routine look like?
Fifteen minutes a week keeps an account clean. A simple routine:
- Open the search terms report filtered to the last seven days.
- Sort by cost and scan every term that spent money.
- Add negatives for anything irrelevant, choosing the smallest word or phrase that blocks the pattern.
- Once a month, promote recurring negatives into a shared negative keyword list applied across all campaigns, so new campaigns inherit the protection automatically.
- Once a quarter, skim your negative lists for anything now blocking searches you actually want, especially after adding new services.
Mature accounts can stretch to biweekly reviews. New campaigns deserve weekly attention for at least the first couple of months, because that is when the strangest queries surface. Negatives pair naturally with the broader optimization habits covered in our guide to optimizing Vancouver Google Ads.
Frequently asked questions
How many negative keywords should I have?
There is no target number, and padding a list with thousands of irrelevant words adds nothing. A healthy local account often accumulates a few hundred negatives over time, built from a starter list plus ongoing search term mining. Quality matters more than volume: a dozen well-chosen negatives that block real recurring waste beat a giant list copied from a random template.
Can negative keywords hurt my campaign?
Yes, if they are too aggressive. An overly broad negative can block genuine customers, such as blocking "cost" and losing buyers researching prices, or blocking a city name that overlaps your service area. That is why negatives should come from your own search terms report rather than guesswork, and why a quarterly review of existing lists is worth the time.
Do negative keywords improve Quality Score?
Not directly, since Quality Score is calculated per keyword. Indirectly, though, blocking irrelevant searches tends to raise your click-through rate because the impressions you keep are better matched to your ads. Over time that improved relevance can support stronger Quality Scores and lower costs per click, alongside the immediate benefit of simply not paying for junk clicks.
What is the difference between negative keywords and location targeting?
Location targeting controls where the searcher is; negative keywords control what they typed. You need both. A person physically in Vancouver can still search "plumber in Kamloops," and location targeting alone will happily show your ad. Adding out-of-area city names as negatives closes that gap.
Want to know how much of your current ad budget is going to clicks that could never become customers? Book a free strategy session and we will walk through your search terms report together and show you exactly where the leaks are.
