Google Ads Negative Keyword List: The 1,380 Negatives We Apply on Client Accounts

What is in the list

Six lists, one job each. Every row carries a match type and a reason, so you can defend every exclusion when someone asks why a term is blocked.

That is 1,380 rows and 1,255 unique terms. The overlap is deliberate: Marketplaces and Retailers 500 share 99 retailer names because one is the categorized short version and one is the flat long version. Pick one or run both, Google deduplicates at serving time. Copy the Google Sheet, delete what conflicts with your catalog, and upload the tabs you need.

Every list fits Google's limits. An account takes up to 20 negative keyword lists with 5,000 keywords per list, and a separate account-level negatives setting capped at 1,000 keywords. The Universal tab fits inside that account-level cap on its own.

What junk intent costs on a real account

On ThatBlanket.co, a US personalized photo blanket brand we manage, the negative keyword framework had to be built deliberately, because words like photo, custom, and gift can be good or bad depending on the phrase. The account's 125-day export ending February 26, 2026 shows what the negatives were protecting against: kids, sports, and discount-intent terms spent about $1,621 and returned about $403 in conversion value. Sports terms alone spent about $152 and returned $0. One honesty note: those figures describe that specific export window, not ongoing performance.

That is the pattern this list exists to stop. Not one dramatic bad query, but hundreds of small ones that each look harmless in the search terms report and jointly return a fraction of what they spend.

Before you upload: the 5-minute conflict check

A negative keyword list is only safe after you delete the rows that describe your own products. Do these five checks against the sheet before anything goes into Google Ads:

1. 1. Product nouns. Search each tab for every noun you sell. An automotive parts store must delete rim. A toy store must delete toy. A snack brand must delete nut. All three sit in the Adult Brand Safety tab for other stores' protection.
2. 2. Positioning words. If discounts are your positioning, do not upload the Deal Seekers tab at all. If you sell refurbished or vintage goods, delete used, refurbished, and vintage from Universal.
3. 3. Your brand and product names. Search for your brand. If any list term appears inside a branded product name, delete it.
4. 4. Retailer relationships. If a retailer stocks your brand and sends you halo demand, delete that retailer from Marketplaces and Retailers 500 before upload.
5. 5. Comparison traffic. Universal blocks vs and compare. If competitor-comparison queries convert for you, delete those rows and control them with dedicated campaigns instead.

The sheet's READ ME FIRST tab repeats this check so it survives the download.

How to install the list

In the Google Ads interface:

1. Step 1

   Open shared lists. Open Tools > Shared library > Exclusion lists > Negative keyword lists.

2. Step 2

   Create one list per tab. Create a negative keyword list for each tab you want, named to match the tab.

3. Step 3

   Paste with match type wrappers. Paste the Keyword column using match type formatting: broad as keyword, phrase as "keyword", exact as [keyword]. The sheet's Match Type column tells you which wrapper each term takes.

4. Step 4

   Apply lists to campaigns. Apply each list to the campaigns it should protect. Universal and Adult Brand Safety are the safe defaults for most stores. The other four are apply-selectively lists.

5. Step 5

   Cover Performance Max. For Performance Max, apply the shared lists at campaign level, or use account-level negatives. Campaign-level negative keywords in Performance Max now take up to 10,000 terms.

In Google Ads Editor: Paste rows as negative keywords at the shared list level with the same match type wrappers, review in drafts, then post. Editor rejects invalid match types, which is one reason every row in this sheet carries a clean Broad, Phrase, or Exact value.

Levels, in one table:

If Shopping is your main channel, the Marketplaces tab usually matters more than any other. Our Google Shopping management work leans on exactly that layer.

The 2024 change that makes this list shorter than it used to be

Since a June 2024 Google Ads update, negative keywords automatically block misspellings. One negative for youtube now blocks its misspelled variants too, which used to take dozens of manual entries. Google's Ads Liaison announced the change, and Google's documentation states it with no match type restriction.

Two things did not change. Negative keywords still do not expand to plurals, synonyms, or reordered variants, which is why this list carries both job and jobs. And in search and Shopping campaigns, negative keywords block search queries, never your own ad copy, so a free negative does not conflict with a free shipping offer in your ads.

What this list does not do

This is the universal layer. It blocks the junk intent that is junk for almost every store. It cannot know that you sell office tables and not coffee tables, or ship to the US and not to the UK. Those account-specific negatives come from your search terms report and from your product catalog's edges.

For that layer, run our free Negative Keyword Generator: an AI prompt that reads your product and landing page and builds the custom negatives this list cannot contain, with the same match type discipline.

Together they are the stack we set up on managed accounts: universal lists first, custom negatives second, then weekly search terms mining. That mining discipline is check 33 in our free Google Ads audit checklist, and it is one of the settings Google's automated suggestions will try to undo, which is covered in the auto recommendations firewall.

Get the stack installed for you: $29

You can install everything on this page yourself in under an hour. If you would rather not:

For $29 we install the full negative stack on your Google Ads account: the conflict check run against your actual product catalog, the right tabs applied at the right levels, and the rows that would block your buyers removed before anything goes live. You get the installed lists plus a one-page note on what was applied where and why.

If your store spends $10,000+/month in the US or £5,000+/month in the UK and the search terms report is where the budget leaks, the negative stack is one piece of a bigger cleanup. Request a Just Free Audit and we will show you the rest.