There Is No Spoon – Negative Keywords
Just like in the Matrix movie sometimes to make something work you have to focus on what isn’t there more than what is there, so just like Neo bends the spoon by imagining there is no spoon negative keywords help shape and define the quality and volume of the traffic generated.
When correctly applied negative keywords can really bring an adgroup or campaign back to life and massively boost the Click Through Ratio, you can end up with all the high quality traffic that clicks the advert anyway BUT you cut out the low quality traffic (that has little buyer intent) from seeing your advert. One recent adgroup we implemented negative matching on went from from 25,000 impressions and 2500 clicks to 8500 impressions and 2000 clicks, the difference in click through ratio rose from 10% to 23% and there was no loss of sales.
Doubling a Click Through Ratio by adding negatives is easy in many instances where broad or phrase matched adgroups are in play. The good news is it’s not just Google that allows you to add negative keywords although Google is the most flexible with negative keyword options of Broad, Phrase or Exact matched.
Negative Broad Match : Most people use this option (often not realising there are more options) which is added by putting a negative sign besides the keyword you wish to exclude the ads to show for when typed in, so let’s say you sell sofas but not leather ones, you would add leather as a negative like this: -leatherWhen negative broad match is used your advert will be blocked from showing when the word/term is used in a search. e.g. if the negative keyword is –leather sofa then your advert will not appear when a user searches for anything containing leather sofa, or sofa leather such as large leather sofa, cheap leather sofa, black leather sofa etc. however it’s not that cut and dried as the negative broad match means that you might still show for different variations or plurals of the search terms. So if you wished to block the plural leather sofas then you’d need to add that too as a negative keyword. Also your ad would still show for Leather or Sofa search terms made separately
Negative Phrase Match : As the name would imply this restricts a phrase from being shown rather than a single keyword, it’s added by putting a negative sign next to the phrase which has quote marks around around it e.g -“leather sofa” however your ad would still appear for canvas sofa or leather chair searches etc. Also if other words are used in the search term the advert will still show e.g a search for leather corner sofa would still display the advert as the negative is for -“leather sofa” in that word order and now the two words are not next to each other any. so you may have to add combinations to refine the traffic further.
Negative Exact Match : This is the most precise negative keyword option and only excludes the exact phrase as it is, in that exact order and is made by adding square brackets around the term like -[leather sofa] but if someone searches for large leather sofa or leather sofas your advert will still show.
The AdWords blog has a nice matrix to show how each version of Negative Match can affect how ads would show against keywords and it’s worth the time to read this to understand how each negative match affects advert display
Correct use of negative keywords needs plenty of thought but it’s well worth the effort as it can massively affect the quality of the traffic coming through and the overall health of your account.
