What Are Negative Keywords and Why Do They Matter?

Negative keywords stop your ads appearing for searches you do not want to pay for. They are the single most reliable way to reduce wasted spend, and the most commonly neglected part of account maintenance.

Web to Spec treats negative keyword work as continuous rather than as setup. New search terms appear every week, and an account left unattended drifts toward broader and less relevant traffic.

How Web to Spec manages them

• Weekly review of the search terms report rather than occasional audits.
• Negatives applied at the right level — campaign, ad group or list.
• Job-seeker, DIY and research queries excluded in service categories.
• Competitor and comparison terms handled deliberately, not by default.

Why this is never finished

In B2B and technical categories this work does most of the heavy lifting, because a single unqualified enquiry consumes engineering time rather than sales time.

Web to Spec reports search term work as part of monthly reporting, and holds Google Ads Search certification. In Tomika's account continuous refinement contributed to an 11.02% reduction in cost per order across two months.