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14,081 negative keywords, grouped by why they waste money, across 15 industries and one universal list. Filter it, copy it, or paste your website below and get one built for what you actually sell.
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Negative keywords
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These searchers have told you in the query that they will not pay.
Someone learning to do it themselves is not hiring you to do it.
Job seekers cost the same per click as buyers and are worth nothing.
People training to do the job are not people paying to have it done.
Definition and background queries are reading, not buying.
People collecting media or looking for a cracked copy never convert.
Someone hunting a template wants a document, not your service.
Price-only shoppers are the worst fit for a premium offer.
Secondhand buyers are shopping a market you are not selling in.
These queries are about a bad experience, not a purchase.
Adult queries are pure waste and a brand-safety problem.
Existing customers looking for support should not cost you a click.
People polling a forum are gathering opinions, not making a decision.
Searchers looking for a public programme are looking for free help.
Resellers and suppliers want your cost price, not your offer.
Entertainment queries collide with commercial terms and never convert.
Students doing assignments consume clicks and buy nothing.
Other businesses researching you or selling to you are not leads.
People who want to do your job for a living are studying, not buying.
Queries naming a country you do not serve waste every click.
Switch on an industry above to load its list alongside the universal one, or open its own page for the full context, the caveats, and the categories that only matter in that vertical.
A big negative keyword list is easy to publish and easy to misuse. These are the terms that look like obvious waste and are usually the opposite. Read them before you paste anything.
Do not blanket-block these
A free trial, free quote, free consultation or free shipping is the primary offer in a huge number of accounts. Block the specific freeloader phrases such as "free download" and "free forever" rather than the bare word, or you will cut your best traffic.
For a discount retailer, a value gym or a budget car lot, "cheap" is the customer describing themselves accurately. Only block it when you are genuinely a premium provider and price shoppers never close.
Review queries are late-stage consideration in most categories and often convert better than the head term. Block them only when you have measured them losing money, and consider a separate low-bid campaign instead.
Superlative queries look like research but sit at the top of most comparison funnels. Blocking "best" is one of the most common ways an account quietly loses its highest-intent non-brand volume.
This is the single strongest local intent signal there is. It only belongs on a negative list for a business with no local delivery at all, and even then it is usually better handled with location targeting.
Price research converts well for considered purchases where the buyer needs a number before they call. Treat it as a landing page problem before you treat it as a negative keyword problem.
Some businesses sell to the DIY market on purpose, including parts retailers, tool brands and course sellers. Check what you actually monetise before you block the whole category.
The fifteen verticals that spend the most on Google Ads, each with the negatives that only matter there.
Someone with a specific legal matter who is looking to hire a lawyer and will book a consultation this week.
Someone shopping for coverage right now who will complete a quote form or call an agent to bind a policy.
A homeowner with a broken or aging system who wants a licensed company to come out, quote the work and do it.
A patient with a specific problem who is choosing a provider and is ready to book an appointment.
A patient with a specific problem or procedure in mind who is ready to book an appointment and pay for treatment.
A homeowner ready to list, or a buyer ready to tour and write an offer, in the market this advertiser actually serves.
Someone who needs money or a financial product now and is ready to start an application with a lender, broker or advisor.
Someone within driving distance who wants to buy a vehicle, book a repair, or get tires fitted in the next week or two.
Someone ready to buy a specific product from your store at the price you advertise.
An evaluator or budget holder at a company that can pay for seats and is looking to start a trial or book a demo.
Someone choosing a programme to pay for who is ready to apply, request information or book a call with admissions.
Someone with dates in mind who is ready to book a room, a seat, a tour or a package.
Someone looking for a gym, studio, trainer or clinic near them who is ready to book a tour, a first class or a consultation.
Someone researching a specific treatment who is ready to book a consultation or an appointment at a clinic near them.
A person with a substance use problem, or the family member acting for them, who is ready to admit to a programme they can pay for in a state the facility serves.
Everything above applies whether you sell roofing or software. Copy it into a shared negative keyword list in Google Ads, then apply that list to your Search and Performance Max campaigns. One list applied to many campaigns beats the same terms pasted into each one, because you only have to update it once.
Industry lists deliberately do not repeat the universal terms. They carry the searches that only waste money in that vertical: the trade certifications, the parts numbers, the licence exams, the adjacent services you do not offer. Keep them in a second shared list so you can see which one is doing the work.
This is the step people skip. A dealer who sells used cars should not import a list containing "used". A gym running a free trial should not block "free". Read the list once with your own offer in mind, and use the category filters to drop whole groups that are wrong for you rather than picking through them term by term.
Broad is the safest default for single words such as "salary", because it blocks any query containing them. Use phrase for multi-word terms where order matters, and exact only when you want to block one specific query and nothing around it. Google does not expand negative keywords to close variants, so "job" does not block "jobs" and both have to be on the list. That is already done here: the singular and the plural ship as separate rows. Misspellings are the exception and are handled for you, so never waste a row on one.
A published list can only know what wastes money in general. Your search terms report knows what wastes money on your account. Once this list is in, the weekly job is to sort that report by cost, read the queries that spent without converting, and add what you find. That habit is worth more than any list, including this one.
A negative keyword tells Google not to show your ad when a search contains that word or phrase. It is the other half of keyword targeting: your keywords decide which auctions you enter, and your negatives decide which ones you stay out of. Without them, broad and phrase match will eventually pull in searches that share your vocabulary but none of your intent, and you pay full price for every one of those clicks.
There is no target number, and adding thousands for its own sake is a mistake. A healthy account starts with a universal list of a few hundred terms, layers on the negatives that matter for its industry, and then grows from its own search terms report every week. The list on this page is a starting point that saves you the first few months of that work, not a substitute for reading your own data.
Negative broad match blocks a search only if it contains every word you listed, in any order. Negative phrase match blocks it only if the words appear together in that order. Negative exact match blocks only the exact query with no extra words. Negative keywords never match close variants, which is why "job" does not block "jobs" and you need both. Use the match type toggle above to copy the list in whichever form you need.
Copy the terms you want, then in Google Ads open Tools, Shared library, Negative keyword lists, and create a list. Paste the terms one per line, save, and apply the list to the campaigns you want it on. Applying a shared list beats pasting terms into each campaign because updating the list once updates every campaign using it.
Yes. Performance Max supports campaign-level negative keywords, up to 10,000 per campaign, and account-level negative keywords apply to it as well. One limit matters: Google states they apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, so they do not filter the YouTube, Display, Discover or Gmail placements a Performance Max campaign also serves on. Demand Gen is audience-led rather than query-led and Google documents no negative keyword support for it, so treat these lists as a Search, Shopping and Performance Max tool.
Google allows 20 negative keyword lists per account with up to 5,000 terms in each, 1,000 account-level negative keywords, and 10,000 per Performance Max campaign. The universal list here is well inside a single shared list, and any one industry list added on top of it still leaves room. If you are approaching a limit you almost certainly have terms that were never worth adding, so prune before you split.
They can, and over-blocking is more common than under-blocking once someone discovers a big list. Blanket-negativing "free" in an account whose main offer is a free consultation, or "cheap" for a value brand, removes exactly the searches that were converting. Every list on this site ships with a list of terms that look like obvious negatives in that industry and are not, for that reason.
Weekly while a campaign is new, monthly once it is stable. The job is the same each time: open the search terms report, sort by cost, and read the queries that spent money without converting. Most of what you find will fall into the categories on this page, which is why starting from a structured list makes the ongoing work faster rather than replacing it.
Yes. Every list on this page is free to copy or download as a CSV, with no signup and no email required. The CSV uses the column names Google Ads Editor expects, so a bulk upload works without editing the file.
Adscriptly
Blocking bad traffic is half the job. Adscriptly sends the other half back to Google: which clicks became qualified calls, booked jobs and closed revenue, so the algorithm bids on outcomes instead of clicks.