Negative keywords - write them preceded by a minus sign?????

Hi everybody
I understand that some might consider my question kind of naive, but I am not embarrassed to put it because sorting it the right way will avoid me wasting lots of money!
I came to the point where I needed to add a list of negative keywords to my Awords campaign and, facing the blank field to be filled with my list, I was paralyzed by a terrible doubt: should I add them preceded by the minus (-) symbol or not?
By logic, having to add them to a specific section as "negative keywords", should mean they must be listed without any additional symbol.
But you surely understand this is not one of those uncertainties you can just resolve by saying "guess, try and see what you get".
In this case failing at having the negative keywords properly working, would cause me to spend a lot of money in appearing in searches that I wanted to avoid instead.
So there's no choice: I definitely have to clear my mind about this issue.
thanks to all
Fabio

 

Hi fabthi,

I'm 99% sure that if you will add keywords only through the "negetive keywords" option they will be count as negetive in both cases.
I did a simple test and add inside one of my campaign "-aaa" and it got saved as "aaa", and then I did the same test with "bbb" and it saved as "bbb" . I believe google changed the system just for people that are't sure like you.
One more reason I believe there is no different as long you are in the "negetive keywords" section is that all of my negetive kewords I once added (two years ago) to one of my campaign (with the minus symbol) got their way into the updated google adwords system and saved without it.

Goodluck!

 

Hi Omril
thanks a lot for your help.
In fact I remember I read quite sometime ago that negative keywords were to be added with a "minus" symbol, that's why I was so doubtful in this occasion.
I will try myself to put in the same list few words with "minus" and others without and see what happens once I click "save".
Just curious, what type of products are you marketing?
This one is my very first campaign and it's about my own job (I am a photographer) so I am very excited.
Fabio

 

I also have another question about these negative keywords.
I originally wanted to add the list at Campaign level but for some reasons Adwords didn't save the list, while it saved the list once I added it at Ad group level.
Does this make sense to you, is there anything I am doing the wrong way?