A keyword in Google Ads defines the search terms for which an ad should appear. The search term is not the same as the keyword and may be more or less distant from it depending on the match type.
Google Ads offers the following match types:
(i) Exact match — the search term must be identical in meaning to the keyword — denoted with square brackets [keyword]. For example, for [tennis shoes] matching terms are shoes for tennis, tennis shoes.
(ii) Phrase match — to trigger the ad, the search term must contain the meaning of the keyword (denoted with quotation marks “keyword”). For example, for “tennis shoes” matching terms include black shoes for tennis, where to buy good tennis shoes.
(iii) Broad match — can potentially trigger the ad for all queries related to the meaning of the keyword. For example, for tennis shoes matching terms could include what do I need to play tennis.
Broad match includes phrase-matched terms, and phrase match includes exact match. You can read about match types in detail in the Google Ads help article.
Negative keyword match types
The match types of negative keywords are discussed less often. Negative keywords also have match types — exact, phrase, and broad. They work in a less restrictive way:
(i) Negative broad match means the ad will be blocked only for queries containing ALL the words in the negative keyword (a keyword can consist of several words), regardless of their order.
(ii) A negative phrase match keyword will block ads for searches containing the keyword phrase.
(iii) A negative exact match keyword will block ads only for searches with a phrase identical to the keyword.
Negative keywords also cover spelling variants (typos). They do not, however, cover synonyms. For example, the negative keyword “car” will also work for “cra” and “caar”, but will not work for “automobile”.
More on this in the Google Ads help article.
When negative keywords won’t work
As mentioned above, negative keywords don’t cover synonyms, just as with the keywords used for targeting.
A negative keyword also won’t work when the search phrase consists of more than sixteen words and the negative keyword appears after the sixteenth word in that phrase.
Regardless of how the negative keyword options are described in Google Ads help, ads may sometimes show for excluded phrases. In practice we observe this fairly often, so we can speak of a significant reduction in the probability of an ad showing rather than an actual blocking by the negative keyword. These situations, however, don’t significantly affect campaign performance.
Negative keyword conflicts
A negative keyword conflict occurs when a negative keyword blocks a keyword we’re using in a campaign. For example, the negative keyword -tickets will conflict with the keyword “flight tickets”. As a rule this is a mistake, because it means one of these keywords is redundant.
You can use a script that sends notifications when a negative keyword conflict is detected and suggests removing the conflicting negative keywords. It’s worth making sure, however, whether you should instead remove the keyword that ended up in the campaign (ad group) by mistake, so as not to delete a negative keyword that is needed.
