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This week I setup and optimized a medium size PPC Campaign on Google Adwords targeting travel related words. Adwords recently launched a new tool “Google’s Negative Keyword Tool” and I wanted to publish some thoughts on that in addition to providing a sample list of words I usually include in my PPC negative keyword list.

Negative keywords are search terms that prevent your PPC ad from being shown. They are helpful to increase ROI by eliminating searches that are on the same topic and match your target keywords for your PPC ads, but have a non-commercial intent, so are unlikely to purchase your product/service and convert to commercial customers.

In PPC figuring out conversion ratios for specific keywords is everything. By identifying and eliminating words that don’t convert or are less likely to convert you can modify your bids to increase ROI.

I thought there would be an abundance of such negative keyword lists online for me to link to. Unfortunately, there aren’t very many floating around for searches of “ppc negative keyword list”. Below this post I’ve included some general categories that can be applied to most PPC campaigns to eliminate clicks from non-commercial intent searches. As with anything there are many examples when these won’t be negative keywords, so please do not cut and paste this list, but in my experience these types of customers are likely to have an extremely low conversion rate for PPC ads which aim to convert to direct sales of products and services.

Google recently launched the negative keyword tool, which helps you identify specific searches related to your “positive keywords” that could potentially differ in intent. You can enter in positive keywords directly or select from one of the campaigns you’re currently running. This tool brings up some very specific negative keywords and I’d recommend at least running it and evaluating the results from each of your PPC campaigns. Unfortunately though, it doesn’t give you any general negative words like the ones I’ve listed below and many of the results are very related to the positive terms, so be sure to add your own negative words (I would especially add the employment negative words) in addition to what you pick up from the Google negative keyword tool.

If you run the Google negative keyword tool with “travel” you’ll get back a list that includes “air” “fares” “hotels” etc. Well.. those results could be targeted searches for a PPC campaign aimed at “travel” and have a potentially commercial intent. So definitely use discretion and track everything with analytics. After your initial campaign is setup be sure to monitor your conversions with analytics and if you notice a correlation between a specific word and an extremely low conversion rate consider adding that to you negative list as well.

Example Non-Commercial Intent –
Looking for jobs or hiring opportunities –
Looking for PR info or Press information
Education related – research etc
Has a technical problem with service / product
Is looking for pornography or is searching compulsively (random keyword associations)

To try to cut back on paying for clicks from searchers with the above intent here is a basic divided list of negative keywords that can be applied to most campaigns.

Employment Negative keywords
jobs
job
interview
interviews
search
monster
employment
hiring
human resources
part time
hr
career
careers
salaries
corp
corps
resume
résumés
salary
opportunities
opportunity
government
gov
recruitment
recruit
positions
position
vacancies* - be careful with this one
help wanted
employers
employer
recruiters
staffing
volunteer
volunteers

Public Relations Negative Keywords
public relations
pr
publicity
press
pr agency
pr agencies
pr firm
pr firms
public relations firm
public relations firms

Education Negative Keywords * only use if this coincides with your marketing message
education
college
colleges
research
book
books
university
universities
schools
school
library
libraries

Problem Negative Keywords
problem
problems
warranty
returns
parts
complaints
complaint
sucks
suck
hate
protest
indictment
illegal

Technical Negative Keywords
warez
crack
serial
serials
cracks
rss
xml
hack
hacks

Porn Negative Keywords
… (sorry, but you’ll have to make you own list)

Profanity Negative keywords
… (sorry, but you’ll have to make you own list)

Other Resources on Negative Keywords and the Google Negative Keyword Tool

• Google AdWords Negative Suggestion Tool: Useful? Visible? | Search Engine RoundTable
• Negative keywords, Excluded keywords why you need them | PPC Marketing Guide

Technorati Tags: ppc, negative keywords, Google negative keyword tool

4 Responses to “PPC Negative Keyword List | What About Google’s Negative Keyword Tool?”

1. 7 Tips For Finding & Expanding Your Negative Keywords Says:
   January 13th, 2008 at 11:08 am

   [...] to say that you do not want your ad being shown for searchers looking to rip you off or complain! Solomon Rothman has a great list of keywords that can start you off. Remember to use common sense when generating [...]

2. The Monstrous List of PPC Negative Keywords Says:
   January 25th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

   [...] http://socialmediasystems.com/06/06/ppc-negative-keyword-list-what-about-googles-negative-keyword-to... [...]

3. Search Engine Marketing » 7 Tips For Finding & Expanding Your Negative Keywords Says:
   February 5th, 2008 at 6:31 am

   [...] to say that you do not want your ad being shown for searchers looking to rip you off or complain! Solomon Rothman has a great list of keywords that can start you off. Remember to use common sense when generating [...]

4. links for 2008-05-12 Says:
   May 11th, 2008 at 10:33 pm

   [...] PPC Negative Keyword List | What About Google’s Negative Keyword Tool? | Social Media Systems A good seed list broken into general categories that can be applied to most PPC campaigns to eliminate clicks from non-commercial intent searches. (tags: ppc keywords negative) [...]

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