Universal Negative Keywords List
Negative keywords are the most underused lever in Google Ads. Every campaign leaks budget to irrelevant searches, and most advertisers only add negatives reactively after reviewing search term reports, which means weeks of wasted spend before the list is useful.
This list gives you a starting point on day one. It is grouped by intent: job and career searches (resume, job posting, salary, interview), education and research searches (course, tutorial, how to, free), competitor signals (vs, alternative, review, comparison), common geographic mismatches and irrelevant product variations.
It is designed to be imported into Google Ads as a shared negative keyword list. It will not be perfect for every account: you will still need to review search term reports and add negatives specific to your industry, and some categories should be skipped for certain businesses, for example some free queries are valuable for SaaS lead generation. A match type is suggested for each term so you can set how aggressive to be based on account volume and budget.
The file is provided on request through our contact form.
What you get
- A list of negative keywords grouped by intent type (jobs, education, competitor signals, mismatches)
- Guidance on match types and which categories to review for your industry
- Import instructions for Google Ads
- Provided on request through the contact form
Who it's for: PPC managers launching new Google Ads accounts or cleaning up existing ones.
What to do with the list once you have it
Import it as a shared negative keyword list rather than pasting terms into each campaign, so one change updates every campaign it is attached to. Start by attaching it to new or recently launched campaigns, where wasted clicks are most likely, and read the match-type column before importing: broad negatives are the most aggressive and can block searches you want.
Before you apply the whole list, go through each category with your own offer in mind. A recruitment business may want searches containing job and career words, a training company may want some course and tutorial queries, and a software company may find that some free-intent searches become good leads. Move those words out of the shared list or into a separate list you can apply only where it suits. After launch, review the search terms report weekly for the first month, add new negatives from what you see and note why, so the list becomes a record of what your account has learned and not only a starting set.
Free tools to use with this swipe file
Google Ads Ad Copy Checker
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More Google Ads resources
- ChecklistGoogle Ads Pre-Launch ChecklistA 30-point Google Ads launch review covering account access, targeting, keywords, ads, landing pages, and conversion tracking.
- TemplateGoogle Ads Monthly Budget TrackerA monthly budget planning and pacing spreadsheet for Google Ads — track spend by campaign, monitor daily pacing, and forecast month-end totals without leaving Excel.
- TemplateGoogle Merchant Center Feed TemplateA correctly structured CSV template for Google Merchant Center product feeds — with all required and key optional attributes pre-labelled and validated.
Need custom help?
Want us to implement this for you?
Our team at Town Media Labs can apply this swipe file directly to your business. Strategy, execution, results.
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