Negative Keywords in Google Ads: Where Your Budget Leaks and How to Stop It

Most accounts I review don't lose money because the keywords are wrong. They lose it because the ad shows for searches the owner never intended. You bid on "website design" and your ad shows for "free website design course". You bid on "contract lawyer" and it shows for "lawyer jobs in Riyadh".

Every one of those clicks comes out of your budget and none of them will become a customer. And it never appears as an obvious error in the campaign view. It shows up as a high cost per conversion, or as a campaign that "brings traffic but doesn't sell".

Why does my ad show for searches I didn't choose?

Because a keyword in Google Ads is not a literal condition. Even with phrase and exact match, Google shows your ad for variations it considers close in meaning. With broad match the net widens further, and Google connects your keyword to topics it thinks are related based on the searcher's history, your landing page and your other keywords.

That isn't a flaw in the platform. It is how it reaches searches you didn't think of. But it means keywords alone don't control where you appear. Real control comes from the other side: telling Google explicitly where you don't want to show.

How do I read the search terms report?

The search terms report is the only place you see what people actually typed before clicking your ad. You'll find it inside the campaign under "Insights and reports", then "Search terms". Google doesn't show every search; low-volume terms are hidden for privacy, so what you see is a large sample, not the full list.

When I open it in any account, I work through it in this order:

1. 1Pick a long enough period: the last 30 days for a small account, the last 7 for an account that spends heavily.
2. 2Sort by cost, highest first. The search that spent the most without converting is the first to deal with.
3. 3Add the conversions and cost per conversion columns. A search with many clicks and zero conversions over a reasonable period is a candidate for exclusion.
4. 4Read each search as a sentence, not a keyword: what does this person want? To buy, to learn, to find a job, or to compare prices with no intent?
5. 5Classify each search: keep it, exclude it, or add it as its own keyword because it's good and deserves its own ad.

Which negative keywords are common in Saudi search?

Arabic search in Saudi Arabia has patterns that repeat across most sectors. These are the groups I usually start with, then adjust for the business. Don't copy them blindly: "price", for example, is a negative for a luxury business and may be the most important buying term for another.

Watch for multiple spellings of the same word. Saudi searchers write مجاني, مجانا and مجانًا, and type اعلانات without the hamza more often than إعلانات. Google doesn't match negative keywords to misspellings, plurals and close variants the way it does with regular keywords, so each variant has to be added on its own.

What is the difference between negative keyword match types?

Negative keywords have three match types in Search campaigns, and they behave differently from regular keywords. Picking the wrong one either leaves the leak open or blocks a good search.

The rule I work by: a single word with obvious intent ("jobs", "pdf") goes in as broad. A phrase that could block a good search if its words were split goes in as phrase. Exact I use rarely, usually to block one very specific search while keeping everything around it.

Should I add negative keywords to each campaign separately?

No. The cleaner way is shared negative keyword lists. You create the list once in the account's shared library, then attach it to every campaign that needs it. When you add a word to the list, it reaches every linked campaign at the same moment.

The split I use in most accounts:

• A general list: free, jobs, course, pdf, download and similar. Attached to every Search campaign.
• A competitor list: brand names you don't want to show for, if you decide that.
• A geographic list: cities and countries outside your service or shipping area.
• A list per product line: stops the campaign for product A from showing for searches about product B, so your campaigns don't compete for the same search.

That last one is often missed. When two campaigns have overlapping keywords, traffic splits between them more or less at random, and it becomes hard to tell which campaign is actually working. Negatives between campaigns send each search to the ad that fits it best.

What about Performance Max and broad match campaigns?

The wider the targeting, the more exclusions matter. Broad match campaigns need the search terms report more than any other, because they reach searches far from your keywords. Performance Max gives you less control, and its exclusion options change with platform updates; check what your account offers, and use brand exclusions and account-level negative keywords where you need them.

What does the weekly routine look like?

Negative keywords aren't a one-time setting. Search behaviour shifts with seasons, news and habits. This is what I do every week in the accounts I manage:

1. 1Open the search terms report for the last 7 days, sorted by cost.
2. 2Exclude searches with clear intent immediately, adding them to the right list rather than to one campaign.
3. 3Note ambiguous searches and come back to them next week with more data.
4. 4Look for the opposite: good searches that convert but have no keyword of their own, and add them.
5. 5Review the lists monthly to make sure no negative is blocking a profitable search by mistake.

When are negative keywords not enough?

If the search terms report is clean and the campaign still doesn't sell, the problem is somewhere else. Usually one of three things: conversion tracking is broken so the account thinks it isn't selling, the landing page doesn't persuade, or the offer itself isn't competitive in its market. Negative keywords stop waste; they don't create demand that isn't there.

And if your budget is below 3,000 SAR a month, data in the search terms report will build up slowly, and you'll have to rely on clear intent more than numbers. That doesn't make negatives less important. It makes them more important, because every wasted click weighs more in a small budget.

If you want to know exactly where your budget is leaking, send your Google Ads account number on WhatsApp. I'll review search terms, negatives and conversion tracking with read-only access and come back within 48 hours with the three biggest mistakes. If the account is healthy, I'll tell you that.