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Negative keywords are one of the highest-leverage optimisations in Google Ads — they stop your budget from being wasted on irrelevant queries. HireOtto supports all three levels of negative keyword management: campaign-level, ad group-level, and shared lists. This guide covers each approach and how to use them together effectively.

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Negative keyword workflow

A practical workflow looks like this:
  1. Pull the search terms report
  2. Sort by cost, clicks, or conversions
  3. Identify irrelevant queries or high-spend zero-conversion terms
  4. Decide whether each term belongs at campaign, ad group, or shared-list level
  5. Add confirmed negatives – or remove stale, incorrect, or overly broad negatives from shared lists
  6. Re-check performance after a few days
Start with the Reporting guide if you need to pull search terms first.

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Three ways to add negatives

Campaign-level — blocks a term across every ad group in the campaign. Best for broad exclusions that apply to the whole campaign (e.g. “free”, “jobs”, “DIY”). Ad group-level — blocks a term only within a specific ad group. Best for preventing cross-contamination between ad groups (e.g. blocking “product B” keywords in the “product A” ad group). Shared negative keyword lists — a reusable list you create once and assign to multiple campaigns. Best for exclusions you’ll want across many campaigns (e.g. a brand safety list, a competitor exclusion list, or a standard jobs/free-trial exclusion set).

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Finding negatives to add

The search terms report is the primary source. Pull it for any account or campaign you want to clean up:
Look for: terms with spend but zero or low conversions, irrelevant queries, competitor brand names you don’t want to pay for, and queries that don’t match your offer.

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Adding negatives at the campaign level

For broad exclusions across an entire campaign:
Mixed match types:
Match type guidance:
  • Exact — only blocks that precise query. Most surgical, lowest risk of over-blocking.
  • Phrase — blocks any query containing that phrase in order.
  • Broad — blocks any query containing all the words in any order. Use carefully — it can block more than you intend.
When in doubt, start with exact match negatives. You can always expand later.

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Adding negatives at the ad group level

For cross-contamination prevention between ad groups:

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Shared negative keyword lists

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Creating a new list

Create a list with initial keywords in one step:
Mixed match types:

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Assigning a list to campaigns

After creating a list (or to assign an existing one), get the list ID first:
Then assign it:
You can assign the same list to multiple campaigns:

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Adding more keywords to an existing list

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Reviewing an existing list

Shared negative lists are especially useful during Google Ads account audits, because they reveal whether an account has reusable exclusions or scattered one-off negatives.

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Removing keywords from an existing list

Shared negative keyword lists change over time. You may need to remove a keyword that is too broad, no longer relevant, or was added by mistake. HireOtto supports two workflows.

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Remove directly using keyword text and match type

Specify both the keyword and match type so HireOtto removes the intended entry:
Claude using HireOtto to remove broad- and phrase-match keywords from a shared Google Ads negative keyword list.

Removing broad- and phrase-match keywords from a shared negative keyword list in Claude.

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Review the list first, then remove selected entries

Start by listing the keywords:
HireOtto returns each keyword’s text, match type, and exact identifier. You can then continue in the same conversation:
You can also provide the returned resource names directly when you already have them:
The review-first workflow is useful when you want to confirm exactly what will be removed before changing a list shared across several campaigns.

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Typical negative keyword workflow

New account or campaign:
  1. Pull search terms for context (if the account has history)
  2. Create a shared brand-safety / common-exclusions list
  3. Assign it to all campaigns
  4. Add any campaign-specific negatives at campaign level
Ongoing optimisation (weekly or monthly):
  1. Pull search terms report sorted by cost
  2. Identify wasted spend — zero-conversion terms with significant spend
  3. Add confirmed wasted terms as campaign-level exact match negatives
  4. Add any terms that indicate ad group cross-contamination at ad group level
  5. For terms you’ll want to exclude permanently across all campaigns, add to your shared list
  6. Periodically review shared lists and remove outdated or overly broad exclusions that may be blocking useful traffic.
Full weekly negative review sequence: