Google Ads Negative Keywords in 2026: The Complete Guide

In short

The more automation in your account (broad match, AI Max, Performance Max), the more negative keywords matter. The system finds queries on its own, and exclusions are your main control tool.

Negative keywords don’t cover close variants. For Ukrainian-language campaigns, that means every case form, plural, misspelling and Russian-language variant has to be added separately.

Negative keywords can be set at the ad group, campaign, shared list and account level. In Performance Max, you can add them at the campaign level and through lists.

In September 2026, dynamic search ads, automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting began automatically upgrading to AI Max. The search terms report now shows where each query came from.

You can overdo it, too: unnecessary negatives cut off profitable queries and get in the way of the algorithm’s learning.

Just a few years ago, negative keywords were routine: review the report once a month, add a few words. In 2026, things are different. Broad match matches queries by meaning, AI Max can serve ads on queries that aren’t among your keywords, and Performance Max works with no keywords at all. In an account like that, negative keywords aren’t housekeeping. They’re part of the strategy.

How negative keywords work: the mechanics

Negative keywords have their own match types, and they don’t behave like regular keywords.

A broad match negative blocks a query if it contains all the words in the negative keyword, in any order.
A phrase match negative blocks a query if it contains that phrase in the same order, even with extra words before or after.
An exact match negative blocks only a query that matches the negative keyword exactly, with no extra words.

Negative keyword	Type	Blocks	Doesn’t block
used laptops	Broad	”laptops used kyiv"	"used laptop,” “refurbished laptops"
"repair manual”	Phrase	”washing machine repair manual pdf"	"manual for washing machine repair”
[phone repair]	Exact	”phone repair"	"phone repair kyiv”
job	Broad	”laptop repair technician job"	"laptop repair technician jobs”

The last row is the key one, especially for the Ukrainian market. Unlike regular keywords, negative keywords don’t expand to close variants: plurals, other word forms, misspellings, synonyms. So “job,” “jobs,” “career,” “careers” and “hiring” are five different negative keywords. In Ukrainian, where words change form by case, these lists grow even faster, and they often also need Russian-language variants, transliteration and queries typed in the wrong keyboard layout.

Levels: where to add negative keywords

Level	What it’s for	Specifics
Ad group	Routing queries between ad groups, cross-negatives	Doesn’t block the query for other ad groups in the campaign
Campaign	Exclusions specific to one campaign	For example, “price” in a campaign for non-price queries, if there’s a separate price campaign
Shared list	Reusable sets for multiple campaigns	Up to 20 lists per account, up to 5,000 keywords in each
Account	Things no campaign needs: jobs, topics that are unacceptable for the brand	Applies to Search and Shopping inventory, including in Performance Max
Performance Max	Exclusions for a specific PMax campaign	Up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign; lists can also be attached; they don’t apply to YouTube or the Display Network

The rule we follow: a negative keyword goes at the highest level where it holds true. If no campaign needs “jobs,” that’s an account-level negative, not thirty separate campaign-level additions.

The search terms report: how to read it

The search terms report is the main source of negative keywords. A few rules for working with it:

Not every query is visible. Some queries aren’t shown because of privacy thresholds. That’s normal, but it means you should add negatives based on patterns, not only on specific queries.
Look at intent, not just numbers. A query with no conversions in a week isn’t necessarily bad. A query like “how to do it yourself” is bad even if it happened to bring in one lead.
The match type and source columns. For campaigns with AI Max, the report shows an “AI Max” match type and a source column that tells you whether the query was found through broad match expansion or through keywordless matching.
Combined reports. For AI Max, you can view the search term, headline and landing page together, so you see not only what the ad showed for but also exactly what the person saw.

N-gram analysis

When there are hundreds or thousands of queries, we break them down into single words and word pairs and calculate spend and conversions for each one. That’s how patterns show up: for example, all queries containing “wholesale” burn budget without sales for a retail store, or the word “reviews” brings in people who are comparing options and rarely order right away. For large accounts, this analysis is automated with a Google Ads script.

What broad match and AI Max changed

Broad match

Modern broad match focuses on meaning rather than words: it takes into account the other keywords in the ad group, the landing page and the context of the query. That expands reach, but it makes negative keywords your main safeguard. We use broad match only together with automated bidding and clean conversions. Otherwise, the algorithm has no way to tell which of the new queries are valuable.

AI Max for Search campaigns

AI Max is a set of features for Search campaigns that combines:

search term matching — broad match expansion and keywordless matching based on your ads and pages;
text customization — generating headlines and descriptions based on your site, ads and assets;
final URL expansion — choosing the most relevant page on your site for the query.

Controls in AI Max:

brand inclusions at the campaign and ad group level, when ads should show only for queries that mention specific brands;
brand exclusions at the campaign level, so you don’t show for queries with competitor brands, or with your own brand if it has a separate campaign;
URL inclusions and exclusions, to control which pages final URL expansion can send people to;
locations of interest at the ad group level;
text guidelines, which set limits for generated copy;
negative keywords, which still apply to queries found by AI Max.

For details, see Google’s help article on AI Max for Search campaigns.

The September 2026 migration to AI Max

Google announced that campaigns using dynamic search ads, automatically created assets and the campaign-level broad match setting are being automatically upgraded to AI Max, and that creating new dynamic search ad campaigns has been discontinued. What this means for search term hygiene:

Check which features were turned on after the upgrade. Former dynamic search ad campaigns have all three features turned on; other campaigns have only some of them.
Add exact match copies of keywords where it matters. Once the broad match setting is turned off or the campaign moves to AI Max, broad match keywords no longer get exact match priority. If it’s important that a specific query goes to a specific ad group, add an exact match keyword.
Set up URL exclusions. Your blog, careers page, login pages and policies shouldn’t become landing pages.
Review the search terms report with the source column more often than usual in the first weeks after the upgrade.

Performance Max and negative keywords

Performance Max now supports campaign-level negative keywords, shared lists and account-level negative keywords. They apply to Search and Shopping inventory. For brand queries, brand exclusions work better, and to avoid showing ads to existing customers, use customer list exclusions. Together with the PMax search terms report, this gives you enough control to keep the campaign from spending budget on obviously irrelevant queries.

Negative keywords you shouldn’t add without thinking

“Price,” “cost,” “cheap.” For most businesses, these are queries from people who are ready to buy. Cut them off only when there’s a separate campaign with a separate page for them.
“Reviews,” “ratings,” “which is better.” This is the comparison stage. These queries often convert worse, but they bring in people who later come back through branded search.
Competitor names. Whether to show for competitor brands is a strategic decision, not a technical one. We make it together with the client.
Russian-language queries. In Ukraine, some people still search in Russian. Whether to block these queries is a business decision, not an automatic rule.
Short words with many meanings. A one-word broad match negative made of a short word can cut off a significant share of your target queries.

Separately, check for conflicts: a negative keyword that blocks one of your own keywords. Google surfaces these conflicts in recommendations, but it’s better not to let it get that far.

A starter negative keyword set for the Ukrainian market

Don’t copy it blindly. Each category makes sense only if it doesn’t fit your offer. The examples below are in English; in Ukrainian-language campaigns, each word also needs its other forms.

Jobs: job, jobs, career, salary, resume, hiring.
Free stuff: free, freebie, torrent, download.
Training and school assignments: courses, training, essay, term paper, lecture, if you’re not an education business.
DIY: diy, how to make, instructions, diagram, if you sell a service.
Used: used, second hand, pre-owned, if you sell only new products.
Other cities: if you operate locally, the names of cities where you aren’t present.
Informational queries: what is, wiki, definition, for most commercial campaigns.

The hygiene process: how we do it

Before launch: a starter set of negatives at the account and list level, plus cross-negatives between ad groups.
The first weeks: reviewing the search terms report several times a week, especially for broad match, AI Max and PMax.
After that: a weekly review and a monthly n-gram analysis.
After every significant change (new keywords, the switch to AI Max, a new PMax campaign): an unscheduled search terms review.
Documentation: we log every decision about major negative keyword categories with an explanation, so six months later no one is guessing why impressions disappeared.

What to do next

Open the search terms report for the last 30 days, sort by cost and look at the top 50 rows. If you see queries you would never knowingly show up for, the search term hygiene in your account needs attention.

If you want specialists to handle it, the AdsConcept team audits search terms, builds a negative keyword system at every level and manages the move to AI Max so that expanded reach doesn’t turn into expanded spend.

Negative Keywords in 2026: Search Term Hygiene with Broad Match and AI Max