How to add keywords that won't trigger my ads (negative keywords)

Negative keywords are specific words or phrases that help prevent your ad from showing to customers who are unlikely to click your ad. They help filter out irrelevant traffic and, in turn, help increase click-through rate (CTR), ad position, and cost per click (CPC).

Use negative keywords to help prevent your ad from appearing in response to certain search queries or other input. You can add negative keywords at the campaign and ad group level, or create a shared negative keyword list to use across campaigns. Each negative keyword can contain up to 100 characters. Each shared negative keyword list can contain up to 5,000 negative keywords. Learn more about negative keywords.

Add negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level

From the collapsible menu on the left, select All campaigns > Keywords > Negative keywords.
Select Campaign or Ad group.
Select Add negative keywords.
Select the appropriate campaign or ad group, then add your negative keywords as appropriate.
Select Save.

Notes

When adding negative keywords, do not use a hyphen ( - ) to indicate that the keyword is negative. You can use brackets ( [] ) to indicate exact match negative keywords and quotation marks ( "" ) to indicate phrase match negative keywords.
If a campaign has multiple ad groups with different language settings, Microsoft Advertising adds the negative keywords only to ad groups that have the same language setting as the account.

Add search terms as negative keywords

You can research search terms, and then add them to your keyword list. You can also use this feature to identify search queries that you want to avoid by creating negative keywords.

Learn about search terms and how to add them as negative keywords.

Edit or delete negative keywords at the campaign or ad group level

From the collapsible menu on the left, select All campaigns > Keywords > Negative keywords.
Select Campaign or Ad group.
Select the checkbox next to one or more negative keywords that you want to edit or delete.
Select Delete or Edit. If editing, make your changes > Save.

Note

When you edit negative keywords in bulk, Microsoft Advertising uses the account language setting.

Use a shared negative keyword list

First you must create a negative keyword list and add your negative keywords. After this, you can add the list to one or more campaigns.

Step 1: Create a negative keyword list

From the top menu, select Tools > Negative keyword lists.
Select Create negative keyword list.
Enter a list name, and then enter one negative keyword per line. You can enter up to 5,000 negative keywords at a time.
Select Save.

Step 2: Add a negative keyword list to one or more campaigns

From the top menu, select Tools > Negative keyword lists.
Select the name of the list you want to add to one or more campaigns.
Select Campaigns in this list.
Select Add campaigns.
Select the plus button next to the campaigns that you want to associate with this negative keyword list.
Select Save.

Edit or delete a shared negative keyword list

From the top menu, select Tools > Negative keyword lists.
To delete the list, select the checkbox next to the list > Delete.
To edit the list, select the list name, and then Add negative keywords or select the checkbox next to one or more negative keywords to Delete them.
To edit keywords, select the keyword, enter your changes > Save.

Add a shared negative keyword list to a campaign

From the top menu, select Tools > Negative keyword lists.
Select the list name.
Select Campaigns in this list.
Select Add campaigns.
From the available campaigns list, select the plus button next to the campaign you want to associate with this list.
Select Done.

Remove a shared negative keyword list from a campaign

From the top menu, select Tools > Negative keyword lists.
Select the list name.
Select Campaigns in this list.
Select checkbox next to the campaign you would like to delete from the list > Delete.