What Performance Max negatives do
Negative keywords stop your ads showing for searches that contain those terms. In Performance Max they apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, not to YouTube, Display, Discover or Gmail.
You can add them to one Performance Max campaign or at account level, where they apply to all Search and Shopping inventory in the account, including Performance Max.
How to add them
- In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Keywords, and select the Negative keywords tab.
- Select the plus button and choose your Performance Max campaign, or all campaigns.
- Add one keyword per line, or choose an existing negative keyword list.
- Pick the match type with symbols: "quotes" for phrase match and [brackets] for exact match. No symbols means broad match.
- Save. Google can also show an estimate of the impact before you commit.
Which terms to exclude
- Clearly irrelevant searches, such as free, DIY, pattern, jobs or a product you don't sell.
- Other brands' names, if those clicks don't turn into sales for you.
- Searches with enough clicks and no sales. Judge them against your usual conversion rate, not after a handful of clicks.
- Not your best converting terms. Check a term's sales across all campaigns before you block it.
A starter negative keyword list for online stores
Most stores can start with words that signal someone who isn't looking to buy a new product. Check each one against your own search terms first, because some will be words you sell on: a store selling sewing patterns should never exclude "pattern".
- Free and do-it-yourself: free, DIY, how to make, homemade, template, pattern.
- Jobs: jobs, careers, hiring, salary, internship.
- Not buying new: used, second hand, rental, repair, spare parts, manual.
- Research only: meaning, definition, history, wiki.
- Not your shop: wholesale or bulk, if you only sell retail, and stores or marketplaces you don't sell through.
Save them as a negative keyword list
Put terms you'll reuse in a negative keyword list in the shared library, then apply the list to each Performance Max and Shopping campaign. Updating the list then updates every campaign that uses it.
Use match types carefully
A broad negative blocks any search containing all its words in any order, so a single word such as "cheap" can block more than you meant. Exact negatives block only that exact search. Start narrow and widen once you are sure.
How UltraROAS.ai does this for you
UltraROAS.ai reads search terms across your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns every day, adds negative keywords for terms that take clicks without selling once there's enough evidence, and records every change with its before and after.