Open almost any Google Ads account that is bleeding money and you will find the same thing. The budget is being spent on searches that were never going to buy. Someone looking for a free template, a job, or a competitor you do not compete with. Every one of those clicks costs you, and most of them are invisible unless you go looking. Negative keywords are the setting that stops the bleed, and most local businesses barely touch them.
A negative keyword tells Google when not to show your ad. You add a word or phrase, and any search that contains it is excluded. It is the opposite of a normal keyword, and it is the single most underused lever for cutting waste in a Google Ads account. Done well, it can save a local business thousands of dollars a year and lower your cost per lead at the same time.
Why your ads show for searches you never wanted
Most advertisers do not realise how loosely Google matches their keywords. If you bid on broad or phrase match terms, Google will show your ad for searches it thinks are related, not just the exact words you chose. That is useful for finding new customers, but it also drags in a lot of rubbish.
Say you are a Wollongong plumber bidding on plumber. Without negatives, your ad can show for plumber jobs, plumber salary, plumber course, plumber apprenticeship, and DIY plumber fixes. None of those people will ever hire you. They click, you pay, and your budget shrinks for the searches that actually matter. The wider you set your match types, the more this happens.
This is why running a campaign without negative keywords is like leaving a tap running. The money drains quietly, and you only notice when the bill arrives. The fix is to decide, in advance, the searches you never want to pay for.
The searches every local business should block
There are a handful of negative keywords almost every local service business should add on day one. These block the most common money wasters before they cost you anything.
- Free and cheap. People searching these rarely want to pay a fair price for quality work.
- Jobs, career, salary, apprenticeship, hiring. These are people looking for work, not your service.
- DIY, how to, tutorial. These searchers want to do it themselves, not hire you.
- Course, training, certificate. People who want to learn the trade, not buy it.
- Competitor names you do not want to bid against, and brand names you do not stock or service.
Add these as a starting list, then keep building it. The goal is to make sure every dollar you spend goes to someone who might genuinely become a customer. If you want the bigger picture on getting your account set up properly, our complete Google Ads guide for Wollongong businesses walks through the full structure.
How to find the wasted searches already happening
The negative keywords you guess are a start. The ones that really save money come from your own data. Google records the exact search someone typed before they clicked your ad, and you can read every one of them in the search terms report.
To find it, open your campaign, go to the keywords section, and click the search terms tab. You will see a list of the real searches that triggered your ads, along with how much each one cost and whether it led to a conversion. This is where the truth lives. You will almost always spot searches you would never have thought to block.
Go through the list and look for two things. First, searches that are clearly irrelevant, which you add as negatives straight away. Second, searches that cost money but never convert, which are often a sign of a poor match. Add those as negatives too. Check this report every week when you start, then at least monthly once the account settles. A messy account can hide dozens of wasted terms, and each one you block is money back in your budget.
Match types matter for negatives too
Just like normal keywords, negative keywords have match types, and getting them wrong can cause problems. There are three to know.
- Broad match negative. Blocks searches containing all your words in any order. Use this carefully, because it can block more than you intend.
- Phrase match negative. Blocks searches that contain your exact phrase. A good middle ground for most situations.
- Exact match negative. Blocks only the precise search you list. Safest, but you need to add every variation.
A common mistake is adding a broad negative that quietly blocks good searches too. If you add the single word repair as a broad negative because you do not do repairs, you might also block tap repair Wollongong, which could be a real customer. Be deliberate. Use phrase or exact negatives when there is any risk of catching valuable searches by accident.
Use negative keyword lists to stay organised
As your list of negatives grows, managing them campaign by campaign gets messy. Google lets you build shared negative keyword lists that you apply across multiple campaigns at once. This is a tidy way to handle the universal blockers like free, jobs, and DIY.
Create one master list of the negatives that apply to your whole account, then apply it to every campaign. That way, when you find a new waster, you add it once and it protects all your campaigns instantly. Keep separate lists for terms that only apply to one service. Good organisation here saves time and stops the same wasted clicks slipping through different campaigns.
What this actually saves you
The maths is simple. Every irrelevant click you block is money that stays in your budget for real prospects. Cut twenty wasted clicks a week at a few dollars each, and you have saved a meaningful sum over a year without touching your budget or your bids. The clicks you do pay for are now more likely to convert, which lifts your overall results and lowers your cost per lead.
There is a quality benefit too. When your ads only show for relevant searches, more people click and fewer bounce, which improves your Quality Score over time. A better Quality Score means Google charges you less per click and shows your ad more often. Negative keywords quietly improve the whole account, not just the wasted spend. For more on bringing that cost down, our guide on lowering your Google Ads cost per lead goes deeper, and if you are weighing automated campaigns, our look at whether Performance Max is worth it for local business is a useful read.
Getting it right from the start
Negative keywords are not a one off task. The best accounts treat the search terms report as a weekly habit, trimming waste before it adds up. If you set up a strong starting list, check your real searches often, and use the right match types, you will spend far less on clicks that were never going to turn into work.
If your Google Ads spend is climbing but your enquiries are not, wasted clicks are usually part of the problem. A proper account audit will find them. To see how paid search fits into your wider plan, start with our digital marketing services and our dedicated Google Ads in Wollongong page.
Written by Ryan Dalle-Nogare, Founder and Managing Director at Adcraft Studio.
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