Using Match Types for Negative Keywords with AdWords

Negative keywords have long been known as an effective way to effectively target your ads and increasing your ROI, which means increasing your conversion rates. Negative keywords are keywords that you do not want linked to your AdWords campaign. When you are creating your negative keyword list, it is always best to be as complete and thorough as possible.

Unfortunately, when doing negative keyword research, many people get tunnel-vision. This leads to creating a negative keyword list that overlaps with their Broad, Phrase, or Exact Match keywords that they want to target. It is important to keep in mind that your negative keywords also utilize match types and choosing the wrong match type will quickly ensure that you are missing out on potential profits.

Negative exact keywords will only not show your ad when the exact term is in the query. Negative phrase keywords will not show your ad when the term is part of the query. Finally, Negative broad will not show your ad anytime the entire term is in the search query.

Here is a quick example to illustrate how important paying attention to match types is when using negative keywords.

Let's assume that you are using the keyword to advertise for your new women’s winter coat line: wool hats, leather gloves, and women’s gifts.

You quickly notice that your campaign is not targeted enough because your ads are showing up when people search for wool gloves. Here is what will happen to your campaign when you add wool gloves as a negative keyword.

As you can see, the different match types significantly alter when and where your ads show up. If you used the negative broad match type, you will be missing out on terms that will have a high ROI, such as: wool hats leather gloves. This is because with the broad match, it will be filtered out because the search query has both the words wool and gloves. If you switch to the other end of the spectrum and use the exact match negative keyword, you will still be showing ads to audiences searching for items that you do not sell including: wool gloves gifts, and mens wool gloves because the only phrase that is getting filtered out is the exact match of wool gloves.

Negative keywords are a great way to maximize your ROI by targeting very specific audiences. However, when choosing your negative keywords, make sure to choose the match type carefully. Otherwise you could be missing out on potential profits or advertising to an audience that has no interest in your products. By doing this you decrease your overall ROI by decreasing your clickthrough rate and increasing your cost-per-conversion.

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