How Do I Add Negative Keywords in Google Ads?

You have three places to put a negative, and the level decides how far it reaches. Ad group level protects one tight set of ads. Campaign level protects everything in that campaign. An account-level negative keyword list is the big one: Google says it applies automatically to all eligible search and shopping inventory in the relevant campaign types.

The rule of thumb is simple. Terms that could never sell anything you stock go on the account list. Terms that are wrong for one campaign but fine for another go at campaign level. Only go down to the ad group when the same word is genuinely good in one ad group and bad in the next.

Google says negative keywords do not match to close variants. A near miss of the word you blocked can still trigger your ad, which is why one big paste never ends the problem. The search terms report is a weekly read, not a one-off chore.

And do not swing too hard the other way. Google's own warning is that too many negative keywords can make your ads reach fewer customers. Every negative you add closes a door. Close the ones nobody was buying through and leave the rest alone.

Scaley AI is ours, and it reads the account 24/7 and mines bad search terms every day rather than every quarter. Each one arrives with the evidence behind it and a one-click exclude, and nothing is excluded until you approve it.

You genuinely do not need software for this on a small account. One campaign, a few hundred search terms a week, twenty minutes on a Monday and you are done. Software earns its keep when the search terms report is longer than you will ever read.

If you want a tool that applies the change itself, look at Opteo. It says its improvements can be pushed live to Google Ads in seconds, and it names "Exclude Bad Traffic" as one of its jobs. That is faster than us, on purpose. Scaley waits for your approval on every single change, which is slower and is exactly the point.