How do we use negative keywords without blocking our mission?
By Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAAdapted from Chapter 8 of The Nonprofit Ad Grant Handbook · Checked against Google's rules November 3, 2026Choose the narrowest match type that blocks the waste, and put each negative at the lowest level that does the job. Before you add a negative, check what the word means in every language your campaigns run in and whether searches containing it have ever converted. Replace risky single words with phrases that block only the meanings you don't want.
Why a bad negative goes unnoticed
Blocked searches leave almost no trace. A negative doesn't produce a warning or an error. The search doesn't trigger your ad, so it never appears in the search terms report, never shows as an impression, and never counts against your click-through rate. The account looks healthy. It's just missing the people the negatives turned away.
How negatives match
| Negative match type | How you type it | What it blocks |
|---|---|---|
| Broad | free tickets | Any search that contains all of the words, in any order, with anything else around them |
| Phrase | "free tickets" | Any search that contains the words together, in that order, with anything before or after |
| Exact | [free tickets] | Only the search "free tickets" itself, with no extra words |
Negative keywords don't stretch to close variants. A positive keyword in phrase or exact match also reaches plurals, misspellings and rewordings that mean the same thing. A negative doesn't. "Job" and "jobs" are two different negatives, and a negative won't block a version with different accents unless you add it.
Choose the narrowest match type that blocks the waste. Use broad for single words that are never relevant, whatever comes around them. For most organizations, words like "torrent," "lyrics" or "salary" fit. Even then, think about every phrase that word could appear in. Use phrase for word combinations that signal unwanted intent only when they appear together, such as "for sale" or "job openings." Use exact for one specific search that keeps turning up and that you're sure about.
An illustration from the handbook. The children's museum is a composite, not a real organization.
A children's museum was tired of contest hunters searching "free tickets giveaway" and "win free tickets," so someone added "free tickets" as a broad negative. The contest searches disappeared. So did the museum's ads for its free family day, for "free museum tickets for kids," the search parents most often used to find it. That search contains both words, so the broad negative blocked it. The fix was to remove the broad negative and add "tickets giveaway" and "win free tickets" in phrase match, and "free tickets" in exact match. The contest searches stayed out, and the free family day came back.
Put each negative at the lowest level that does the job. Ad group negatives block a search only for that ad group's ads. Campaign negatives block it for every ad group in the campaign. Shared negative keyword lists, under Tools, then Shared library, then Exclusion lists, apply to many campaigns at once and are the best home for words you never want anywhere. A negative at the wrong level causes its own problems.
Check meaning and evidence, separately
Check every negative against two things. Meaning is a human question. What does this word mean in each language our campaigns run in, and does any of those meanings describe something we offer? This needs a person who knows the language and the organization. Evidence is a data question. Has any search containing this word ever led to a conversion, in this account or any other account the organization runs, and is the word part of any of our own keywords? Each check catches things the other misses.
An illustration from the handbook. The language school is a composite; its pattern comes from a real account.
A language school offered scholarships and ran campaigns in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Its negative list blocked "beca" and "becas," the Spanish word for scholarship, and "bolsa," which in Portuguese can mean a bag, a stock exchange, or a scholarship. As broad negatives, those words blocked the very students the scholarships were meant for. The list also blocked "trabajo," which stopped the Spanish volunteer keywords such as "trabajo voluntario" from ever serving. A reviewer who searched the list for "scholarship" found nothing, because the check was done in English.
Replace words with phrases, in the same change. Removing a broad single-word negative is only half the fix, because the unwanted meanings are still unwanted. The school replaced "bolsa" with phrase negatives such as "bolsa de valores" and "bolsa de trabajo," so "bolsa de estudos" could get through. When you unblock a broad word, add its replacement phrases at the same moment. Waiting to see what comes in means a week or two of the very searches the word was blocking.
Look for conflicts with your own keywords. A negative that matches one of your own keywords is always a fault. Download your keyword list and your negative lists, put them side by side in a spreadsheet, and for each negative search the keyword column for its words. A keyword with zero impressions over several months, in a campaign that's otherwise serving, is often blocked by a negative somewhere.
A routine for every new negative
- List what you offer, in every language your campaigns run in.
- Check the meaning in each language.
- Check the negative against your own keywords in the campaigns it will apply to.
- Check the evidence for conversions, in this account or any other you run.
- Choose the narrowest match type that blocks the waste.
- Add the variants you mean to block, including plurals and accents.
- Record any decision that a future reviewer might question.
Most negatives pass in seconds. The routine earns its keep on the handful of words where it stops you blocking your own mission.
Section 8.5 of the handbook has the full checklist for adding a negative list in another language, and a sample record of decisions.
Questions
Does a negative keyword block plurals and misspellings?
No. Negative keywords don't match close variants, so add each variant you mean to block: singular and plural, with and without accents, and common misspellings.
What should we write down about a negative?
Keep a short record of every negative you keep on purpose despite its looking risky, and every negative you remove after a review. Note the word, the reason, the evidence, the date and who decided. Without the note, each review starts the same debate from scratch.
What if nobody on our team speaks the campaign's language?
Start by asking whether you should be running a campaign in that language at all. If the campaign is worth running, find a reader. A staff member, board member, volunteer, partner organization or student who speaks the language can read a negative list in twenty minutes. Give them your list of what you offer and ask one question about each negative. Could someone searching for us use this word?
See something wrong or out of date? Tell us
Jose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTAJose Gomez, Jr., CEA, MVTA, is the CEO of 3nity. He founded the company in 2001 to serve the people who serve people, after working as Internet Director at a media network. He built a career website that was acquired by Salem Communications in 2004, and created the 3nity Web Presence Platform. Through Nonprofit Marketing Center, a division of 3nity, he and his team help churches and nonprofits of every kind bring resources and awareness to their missions, including by helping them get the most from the Google Ad Grant.