How Do Negative Keywords Work?

The negative keywords feature in adCenter lets you specify the keywords or phrases that you do not want to trigger a display of your ad when a customer types them in a search query.

Negative keywords can be set at the campaign level, the ad group level and the keyword level. Only the lowest-level list that exists for a given keyword will be active. For a given keyword, if you have specified a negative keyword list, that list will be used and any ad group-level or campaign-level lists will be ignored for that keyword. Similarly, if there is no keyword-level list, then the ad group-level list will apply. If neither a keyword-level list nor an ad group-level list exists, then the campaign-level list applies.

For example, you can add negative keywords to:
  • Campaigns. Campaign-level keywords apply to all keywords in a campaign, unless you also associate negative keywords with an ad group or a specific keyword.
  • Ad groups. If you associate negative keywords with an ad group, campaign-level negative keywords will not be applied to that ad group.
  • Specific keywords. If you associate negative keywords with a specific keyword, campaign-level and ad group-level negative keywords will not be applied to that keyword.

When creating negative keywords keep the following rules in mind:
  • Negative keyword lists are limited to 1,022 characters. You can have up to 1,022 characters at the keyword level, ad group level and campaign level.
  • Each negative keyword can contain up to 100 characters.
  • Negative keywords or negative keyword phrases must be separated by commas.
  • Including the commas, the entire negative keywords list cannot exceed 1,022 characters.
  • In adCenter, you do not place a minus sign (-) before a negative keyword.

Campaign-level negative keywords
When you add negative keywords to a campaign with multiple ad groups that have different language and market settings, Microsoft adCenter adds the negative keywords only to ad groups that have the same language setting as the account.

For example, suppose the language setting for your account is English, and your campaign includes some ad groups that are set to French - France and others that are set to English - United States. The negative keywords that you add in bulk to the campaign apply only to ad groups that are set to English.

Additional Resources