What are negative keywords and how do you use the search terms report?

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing on specified queries. They are the main tool for stopping wasted spend, and the single highest-return routine task in a search account.

The search terms report shows the actual queries people typed, as opposed to the keywords you bid on. The two are never identical, and the gap is where money leaks.

The routine:

• Review it regularly — weekly for a high-spend account, monthly for a small one.
• Sort by cost and look for queries with spend and no conversions. Add irrelevant ones as negatives.
• Look for winners too. A converting query not in your account should be promoted to its own keyword, where you can control its bid and write specific copy.
• Add negatives at the right level. Campaign or ad group level for targeted exclusions; a shared negative list applied across campaigns for universal ones such as "free", "jobs", "salary", and competitor names where you do not want to bid.

Common negative themes: job seekers, students researching, DIY intent, free intent, and — often overlooked — a cross-negative structure that stops your broad campaign stealing traffic from your exact campaign.

Note: Negative match types work the same way but there is one trap: negative phrase and exact do not include close variants, so misspellings must be added separately.