Ready-made negative keyword lists by niche — block job seekers, DIY searches and bargain hunters before they waste your budget.
Paste into Google Ads: Tools → Shared library → Negative keyword lists. Suggested match type: phrase. Review before applying — some terms may be valid for your specific business.
Negative keywords are the single most underused optimisation in Google Ads. While advertisers obsess over bidding strategies, Quality Scores, and audience targeting, they often ignore the most direct way to stop wasting money: telling Google exactly which searches should never trigger their ads.
A comprehensive negative keyword strategy can reduce wasted spend by 20–40% in the first month. This free tool gives you professionally curated negative keyword lists for the most common local service niches, ready to copy or download as a Google Ads Editor-ready CSV.
A negative keyword is a word or phrase that, when present in a search query, prevents your ad from showing. If you're a plumber and you add "DIY" as a negative keyword, searches like "DIY plumbing repair," "how to DIY fix a drain," or "DIY pipe replacement" will not trigger your ad. You keep your budget for searches with genuine buying intent.
Without negative keywords, broad match and phrase match campaigns show for hundreds of related-but-wrong searches. Google's matching algorithm is designed to maximise clicks (Google's revenue), not to maximise your ROI. Negative keywords are your override.
Choose your industry from the dropdown: Plumbing, AC/HVAC, Electrician, Cleaning, Auto Repair, Appliance Repair, Dental, or Legal. Or select Universal for basics that apply to any campaign.
Browse negative keywords organised by category. Tick off any that don't apply to your business (rare, but possible — e.g. if you DO offer courses, exclude the education category).
Copy to clipboard for direct paste into Google Ads, or download as CSV for Google Ads Editor import. Editor import lets you apply the list to multiple campaigns at once.
In Google Ads, create a "Shared Negative List" (Tools & Settings → Negative Keyword Lists) and apply it to all campaigns. This way, future campaigns inherit your negatives automatically.
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There's no ideal number — it depends on how long your account has been running and how broad your keywords are. A new campaign for a plumber might start with 50–100 negatives. A mature account with years of optimisation might have 500+. Start with this tool's curated lists, then add more as you review your search terms report monthly.
Yes — this is called a "keyword conflict" and it means your negative keyword is blocking your own target keyword. Google Ads Editor has a built-in conflict checker. Always run it after adding a new negative list. This tool's curated lists are designed to avoid common conflicts, but always verify for your specific setup.
Use broad match negative for single words that are always junk (e.g. "free," "jobs," "DIY"). Use phrase match negative for phrases where the word order matters. Use exact match negative for very specific searches that are junk but where similar variations might be fine.
Google has added negative keyword support to Performance Max, but it's more limited than Search campaigns. You can add campaign-level negatives. For brand protection and clear exclusions (like competitor names), this works well. The lists from this tool can be applied to PMax negatives.
Beyond the universal categories, each service niche has its own patterns of junk traffic that require specific negative keywords. Plumbing companies frequently show for "plumbing supply store" and "plumbing tools" — product searches, not service searches. AC companies show for "AC unit for sale" and "portable AC buy." Electricians show for "electrical supplies wholesale." These require niche-specific negatives that the universal list doesn't cover.
Our niche lists are compiled from real account data across hundreds of service businesses. Each niche list has been reviewed by PPC specialists with experience in that vertical — not just generic keyword research. The Dental niche list, for example, includes "dental school," "dentist salary," "dental hygienist jobs," and "whitening strips buy" — searches that clearly won't result in a dental appointment booking but that regularly trigger dental ads in broad match campaigns.
Google Ads lets you apply negative keywords at three levels, and understanding the difference is important for building an efficient negative strategy. Account-level negatives (via Shared Lists) apply everywhere — use these for universal junk like "jobs," "free," "DIY," and "how to." Campaign-level negatives apply to everything within one campaign — use these for niche-specific terms relevant to that campaign's service. Ad-group-level negatives allow the most granular control — use these to prevent cross-triggering between ad groups (e.g. preventing your "Emergency Plumber" ad group from showing for "boiler repair" searches when you have a separate "Boiler Repair" ad group).
The most efficient structure: build a Shared Negative List with universal junk terms, apply it to all campaigns. Then add campaign-level negatives for niche-specific junk. Use ad-group negatives sparingly, only when cross-triggering is a documented problem. This keeps your negative structure manageable and auditable.
Negative keywords are not a set-and-forget task. Google's matching algorithms change, new search patterns emerge, and your campaigns evolve. A monthly negative keyword review process should include: pull the search terms report for the last 30 days, run it through our Search Term Cleaner tool, review the flagged terms for accuracy, add confirmed junk to the appropriate level (account, campaign, or ad group), check for keyword conflicts using Google Ads Editor's conflict checker, and update your niche lists if new patterns appear that aren't covered. This process takes 20–30 minutes per account per month but can prevent hundreds of dollars in wasted spend.
A negative keyword conflict occurs when a negative keyword blocks one of your own target keywords from triggering your ad. This is more common than most advertisers realise. A simple example: you add "repair" as a broad match negative (to block "repair manual" searches), but "repair" is also the core word in your target keyword "AC repair Dubai" — your negative has now blocked your primary keyword.
Google Ads Editor has a built-in conflict checker (Tools → Find Duplicate Keywords → including negatives) that identifies these conflicts. Always run it after adding a new negative keyword list. This tool's curated lists are designed to avoid common conflicts, but every account has unique keyword combinations that require individual verification. Never add single-word broad match negatives without checking for conflicts first.
Negative keywords are powerful but not always the right tool. Avoid adding negatives based on low CTR alone — a search term might have low CTR but high conversion rate, and blocking it hurts performance. Avoid adding competitor brand names as negatives unless you have a specific strategy reason — competitor keyword searches from people switching providers are often high-value prospects. Avoid adding question words ("what," "why," "how") as blanket negatives — "how much does AC repair cost" is a price research query with genuine buying intent, not information-seeking junk. Evaluate each negative on intent, not just on whether it looks irrelevant at first glance.
The best time to add negative keywords is before a campaign launches, not after budget has already been wasted. Before launching any new Google Ads campaign, run through this negative keyword pre-flight: add all universal negatives (jobs, DIY, free, research intent) from this tool's universal list. Add all niche-specific negatives for your industry from the relevant list. Review your keyword list and think about what unintended searches each keyword might match — manually add specific exclusions for obvious mismatches. Set up a Google Ads Shared Negative List so these negatives apply automatically to all future campaigns you create.
This pre-launch investment of 30 minutes in negative keyword setup saves weeks of wasted budget that would otherwise fund the learning phase. A campaign that launches with 100+ negatives in place reaches its target CPA 40–60% faster than one that starts clean and builds negatives reactively from the search terms report.
After analysing search term data across hundreds of local service accounts, certain negative keyword patterns emerge consistently by industry. Plumbing: "pipe for sale," "plumbing parts," "bathroom fittings price," and "drain snake rental" are the most wasteful search categories beyond the universal junk. AC Repair: "AC unit price," "portable AC," "AC remote buy," and "air filter replacement buy" waste the most budget. Electrician: "electrical wire price," "extension cable buy," "generator for sale," and "solar panel price" are the top wasters. Cleaning Services: "cleaning products buy," "vacuum cleaner price," and "mop purchase" dominate. Legal: "law school fees," "LLB admission," and "free legal advice" are consistently high-volume junk. Add these industry patterns on top of the universal list for maximum negative keyword coverage from day one.
Some negative keywords are evergreen (always block "jobs," "DIY," "free"). Others are seasonal and should be managed dynamically. An AC company in the Middle East might add "AC for sale" as a negative in winter when retail AC purchases spike in search volume, but consider removing it in summer when the focus is entirely on repair (though even then, it's probably right to leave it in). A tax accounting firm might add "tax return software" as a negative during peak season when DIY filers surge in volume, then remove or adjust it off-season.
The trigger for adding seasonal negatives is simple: when your search terms report shows a new category of junk searches emerging that wasn't there before, add them as negatives immediately rather than waiting for the monthly review cycle. The trigger for removing seasonal negatives is a conversion rate drop combined with a decrease in search volume — check whether the negative is now blocking legitimate intent that has shifted in the new season.