Add negative keywords

Help prevent your ads from being displayed with negative keywords in Microsoft Advertising Editor.

Negative keywords are a great way to help prevent your ads from being displayed when a search query contains your keywords but is not relevant to your landing page content.

Campaign-level keywords apply to all keywords in a campaign. Negative keywords assigned at the campaign level will also be applied at the ad group level (in addition to any ad group-specific negative keywords).

Add a single negative keywordexpando image
  1. Select the campaign or ad group from the tree view in the left pane.
  2. Select Negative Keywords under Keywords and targeting from the type list in the left pane.
  3. In the data view, click Add negative keyword and select Add ad group negative keyword or Add campaign negative keyword.
  4. Type your negative keyword in the edit pane and select a match type.

    Note
    Do not type a minus sign (-) before negative keywords.

Add multiple negative keywordexpando image
  1. Select the campaign or ad group from the tree view in the left pane.
  2. Select Negative Keywords under Keywords and targeting from the type list in the left pane.
  3. In the data view, click Make multiple changes and then select Add/update multiple ad group negative keywords or Add/update multiple campaign negative keywords.
  4. In the Make multiple Changes dialog box, do one of the following:
    • If you are going to paste in a list that includes campaign and ad group names, check the My negative keyword data includes campaign and ad group names.
    • If you are going to paste in a list that does not contain campaign and ad group names, uncheck My negative keyword data includes campaign and ad group names.
  5. Under Select location, select the campaigns or ad groups that you want to add negative keywords to.
  6. Click Insert headings.
  7. In the text box, type the data for one ad per line, in the order indicated by the headings.
  8. Click Next.
  9. Select the appropriate column headings in each of the drop-down boxes and click Import.
  10. On the Import Completed page, after you review your changes, select Close.
Notes
  • Microsoft Advertising does not support keyword-level negative keywords. If you're using third-party or custom applications to add negative keywords, those applications might allow you to enter keyword-level negative keywords. However, Microsoft Advertising will not use them when filtering queries. It is therefore important that you avoid using keyword-level negative keywords and instead add those negative keywords to the ad group or campaign level.
  • Microsoft Advertising Editor users must be running version 8.1 or later to use exact match negative keywords. Users of earlier versions are limited to phrase match.
  • To activate changes that you make in Microsoft Advertising Editor, you must post them to your Microsoft Advertising account.

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