Home › Guides › Negative keywords

Google Ads negative keywords: 7 mistakes that waste lead-gen budget, and the fixes

By Abhishek Thakral · abhi.performs, Dubai · Updated November 2026 · 9 min read

Most UAE lead generation accounts I audit have negative keywords. The problem is how they were added: a list copied from a blog two years ago, a negative that quietly blocks the advertiser's best keyword, and Performance Max running with no negatives at all. Meanwhile the sales team is still calling job seekers and people looking to rent.

Below are the seven mistakes I see most often, what Google's own help pages say about each, and the fix.

How Google Ads negative keywords work

A negative keyword tells Google Ads not to show your ad when a search contains that term, and Google suggests looking for searches that resemble your keywords but are really after a different product (About negative keywords, Google Ads Help).

Google's example is an optometrist who sells eyeglasses and adds "wine glasses" and "drinking glasses" as negatives. Same word, different buyer. In a Dubai off-plan campaign the same thing happens with "apartments for rent": close to your keywords, never going to buy.

You can add them to an ad group, a campaign, a shared list or the whole account (Add negative keywords to campaigns, Google Ads Help). Where a negative sits matters as much as what it says.

Mistake 1: expecting negatives to catch plurals and synonyms

Negative keywords do not match close variants or other expansions, so Google's negative "flowers" blocks "red flowers" but still lets your ad show on "red flower" (Google Ads Help).

This catches people out because positive keywords work the other way. Your keyword "clinic" can match "clinics", but your negative "job" will not block "jobs". Google says you need to add synonyms and singular or plural versions yourself.

The fix: for every negative, add the plural, the singular and the obvious synonyms: job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, career, careers. In the UAE add the Arabic version too. A negative "jobs" does nothing against a search for وظائف (Arabic for jobs), and Google can show an English ad to someone searching in another language (more in Google Ads language targeting).

Mistake 2: using the wrong negative match type

Negative keywords come in broad, phrase and exact match, and each blocks a different set of searches; broad is the default and the type most negatives should use (Google Ads Help).

• Negative broad (rent) blocks any search that contains all the negative's words, in any order. "Rent apartment Dubai Marina" is blocked. "Rental apartments" is not, because "rental" is a different word.
• Negative phrase ("for rent") blocks searches with those words in that order, with extra words allowed. It blocks "villas for rent in Arabian Ranches" but not "rent a villa".
• Negative exact ([apartments for rent]) blocks only that exact search. "Apartments for rent JVC" still shows your ad.

The usual mistake is negative exact match used for junk. Exact negatives only stop one search, while junk arrives in hundreds of versions. I use single-word broad negatives for words that are never good (jobs, salary, course) and phrase or exact only when the words are fine alone but wrong together.

Normal keywords follow different match rules, covered in broad match vs exact match.

Mistake 3: a negative that blocks your own keyword

Google warns that a negative keyword overlapping your regular keywords "will cause your ad not to show" (Google Ads Help).

An illustrative example: an off-plan campaign gets clicks on "floor plan" searches, so someone adds the broad negative "plan". The campaign's best keyword is "off-plan apartments with payment plan". Every search for it now contains "plan", so the ad stops showing on it. Impressions on that keyword fall, nobody connects it to the negative, and the account looks like it has run out of demand.

The fix: before you add a negative, search your keyword list for it. One-word negatives are the risky ones, and so are shared lists, because a word that is junk for one campaign can be the product in another.

Mistake 4: adding negatives one campaign at a time

Words you never want, such as jobs or salary, belong in one account-level list that Google applies to the Search and Shopping inventory of every Search, Performance Max, App, Shopping, Smart and Local campaign (About account-level negative keywords, Google Ads Help).

Negatives kept campaign by campaign never reach the next campaign you launch, so its first week pays for job seekers you excluded last year.

• Account level (Admin, Account settings, Negative keywords): up to 1,000 negatives, for words that are never good anywhere in the account.
• Negative keyword lists (Tools, Shared library, Exclusion lists): up to 20 lists per account and up to 5,000 negatives in each, applied to any campaigns you choose. Use them by theme, such as "renters" for sales campaigns.
• Campaign and ad group negatives: for exclusions that only make sense in one place, like keeping your villa searches out of the apartments ad group.

Google says these limits are subject to change (Google Ads Help). A change to a list reaches every campaign that uses it.

Mistake 5: forgetting Performance Max and AI Max

Performance Max now takes negative keywords at campaign level or through a shared list, but Google says they apply to Search and Shopping inventory only (Negative keywords in Performance Max campaigns, Google Ads Help).

Many accounts I audit still run Performance Max next to Search with no campaign negatives on it. Your account-level list already applies to it, but campaign-specific junk does not. If Performance Max is feeding your sales team renters or job seekers, add the same theme lists you use in Search (see Performance Max for lead generation).

Negatives do not reach YouTube or Display placements in Performance Max. For those, Google has separate settings, such as excluded content keywords in account settings, which apply to campaigns running on YouTube or the Display Network (Google Ads Help).

For AI Max, Google's answer is direct: "Yes. Negative keywords will be respected even with AI Max turned on" (AI Max for Search campaigns, Google Ads Help). Because AI Max can match searches beyond your keyword list, your negatives do more of the work there. See AI Max for Search campaigns.

Mistake 6: excluding words that signal a buyer

Google's own warning is that with too many negative keywords "your ads might reach fewer customers", and the most expensive over-exclusions are words that look cheap but belong to buyers (Google Ads Help).

Words like "price", "cost", "near me", "best" and "payment plan" often mean the person is close to deciding. Someone searching "botox price Dubai" is usually comparing clinics, not doing homework. Exclude those words because a high cost per lead annoyed you, and you are cutting the searches most likely to book.

The fix: judge a word on what it produced, not how it sounds. Look at its leads in your CRM before you exclude it. If "cheap" brings leads your sales team rejects, exclude it. If it brings booked consultations at a higher cost, keep it and fix the bid or the ad instead.

Mistake 7: building the list once and never looking again

New junk keeps arriving, and the search terms report is where Google shows the real searches that triggered your ads (About the search terms report, Google Ads Help).

Find it under Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Add the hidden Keyword column to see which of your keywords caught each search. And know that the report is not complete: Google leaves out search terms with too little query activity for privacy, and groups them into themes in search terms insights instead.

The fix: once a week for the first month of a campaign, then every two weeks, sort search terms by cost and ask of each one: would I have chosen this search? If not, add a negative at the right level, with its plural, synonyms and Arabic version. This is also the first check in my Google Ads audit.

A starter list for UAE lead generation

A starter negative list should hold only the words that are wrong in every campaign; your own search terms report supplies the rest, not a list copied from someone else's account. These illustrative examples are for the verticals I work with, so check each against your keywords first:

• Every account: job, jobs, vacancy, vacancies, career, careers, salary, internship, course, training, pdf, template, plus the Arabic for each.
• Off-plan and property sales: rent, rental, ejari, roommate, bed space, if you only sell (more in Google Ads for real estate in Dubai).
• Aesthetic clinics: course, training, certification, jobs, plus treatments you do not offer.
• Business setup: salary, jobs, visa status, plus free zones or licence types you do not handle.

Price, cost, cheap, near me and best are missing on purpose: in these verticals they are usually buyer words (mistake 6).

The fix order

If your account has these problems, fix them in this order:

1. Check for conflicts. Look for negatives that block your own keywords, especially one-word negatives and shared lists, and remove them.
2. Move the never-good words to the account-level list, with plurals, synonyms and Arabic versions.
3. Group the rest into themed lists and apply them to Search and Performance Max campaigns alike.
4. Fix the match types: single words as negative broad, multi-word junk as phrase, exact only for one specific search.
5. Review search terms by cost every week or two, and check a word's leads in your CRM before you exclude it.

If you would rather have someone else read the search terms every week, that is part of my Google Ads management.

Frequently asked questions

Related