I was looking at a clients account yesterday. I did a report on all search terms in the last 30 days and there were hundreds of clicks (totalling over £1000 worth) which were just completely pointless. So, if an example phrase i wanted was 'cuddly toys' i started putting the negative words in the keyword lists, such as: -really cheap cuddly toys -free cuddly toys -cuddly guns You get my drift... Problem now is that the adverts aren't showing for 'cuddly toys.'! I know i could make all my keyword phrases exact match, but on the flipside i don't want people to not see the adverts when they type in perfectly legitimate, related phrases. My question is then, can i make the negative keywords exact match? I tried putting in -"free cuddly toys" but it didn't work... This is how Google sets it out: keyword = broad match "keyword" = match exact phrase [keyword] = match exact term only -keyword = don't match this term Would appreciate any help... Cheers Rob
I am not sure why your ads have stopped completely but, if you are using broad match for your keywords, i.e. cuddly toys, and you do not want to be shown for 'free cuddly toys' or 'cheap cuddly toys' or any query for free or cheap goods you just need to put the words 'free' and 'cheap' as negative broad match. If you don't sell guns just negative broad match 'guns'. You could make them phrase, or even exact, match but it would require many more terms, e.g. free cuddly toys, cuddly free toys, toys cuddly free, etc. For a three word term there are 6 possible combinations or 12 if you include singular and plural, 24 and 48 respectively for a four word term (Whilst there are some combinations that seem more logical than others it is my experience that searchers do manage to use most of the possibilities at some time or other!). So, if you are only using broad match it is much easier and quicker to just negative broad match the individual words you want to avoid.
Found the relevant Google answer for other people's benefit. https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6100&hl=en_GB
Regarding negative keywords, isn't it that your meant to leave in the word you do want to show for? So you would add -really cheap -guns and not -really cheap cuddly toys -cuddly guns ?