What Are Negative Keywords?

You can help prevent your ads from appearing against search queries unrelated to your web site by using negative keywords or keyword phrases. For example, say you sell cruise ship vacation packages. You’ll want to make sure your ads for cruise ship vacations don’t show up for people searching for gossip or information about actor Tom Cruise or his daughter Suri Cruise. To avoid these irrelevant impressions and maximize the power of your results, you’ll want to specify “Tom” and  ”Suri” as negative keywords.

While it might be easy to think that your obviously travel-related ad copy would be enough to discourage any unqualified traffic, you’d be surprised how many clicks you could generate from online window shoppers. And these types of clicks can hit you in the pocketbook.

The risks of exposing your ads to a less qualified audience—people not really interested in your product or service—can result in decreased click-through rate or, worse, increased bounce rate on your landing page. CTR is critically important to your overall quality score and, consequently, your ad's position on the search page. Low CTR will cost you a higher bid amount to reach the same position as a competitor with higher CTR. And a bounce—someone who leaves your landing page after only a few seconds—costs you money without hope of a return. The short and simple version: low CTR or high bounce rate wastes your money.

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