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PPC Negative Keyword List | What About Google's Negative Keyword Tool? 
By: Solomon Rothman 2007-06-07 This week I setup and optimized a medium size PPC Campaign on Google Adwords targeting travel related words. Adwords recently launched a new tool "Google's Negative Keyword Tool" and I wanted to publish some thoughts on that in addition to providing a sample list of words I usually include in my PPC negative keyword list.
Negative keywords are search terms that prevent your PPC ad from being shown. They are helpful to increase ROI by eliminating searches that are on the same topic and match your target keywords for your PPC ads, but have a non-commercial intent, so are unlikely to purchase your product/service and convert to commercial customers. In PPC figuring out conversion ratios for specific keywords is everything. By identifying and eliminating words that don't convert or are less likely to convert you can modify your bids to increase ROI. I thought there would be an abundance of such negative keyword lists online for me to link to. Unfortunately, there aren't very many floating around for searches of "ppc negative keyword list". Below this post I've included some general categories that can be applied to most PPC campaigns to eliminate clicks from non-commercial intent searches. As with anything there are many examples when these won't be negative keywords, so please do not cut and paste this list, but in my experience these types of customers are likely to have an extremely low conversion rate for PPC ads which aim to convert to direct sales of products and services. Google recently launched the negative keyword tool, which helps you identify specific searches related to your "positive keywords" that could potentially differ in intent. You can enter in positive keywords directly or select from one of the campaigns you're currently running. This tool brings up some very specific negative keywords and I'd recommend at least running it and evaluating the results from each of your PPC campaigns. Unfortunately though, it doesn't give you any general negative words like the ones I've listed below and many of the results are very related to the positive terms, so be sure to add your own negative words (I would especially add the employment negative words) in addition to what you pick up from the Google negative keyword tool. If you run the Google negative keyword tool with "travel" you'll get back a list that includes "air" "fares" "hotels" etc. Well.. those results could be targeted searches for a PPC campaign aimed at "travel" and have a potentially commercial intent. So definitely use discretion and track everything with analytics. After your initial campaign is setup be sure to monitor your conversions with analytics and if you notice a correlation between a specific word and an extremely low conversion rate consider adding that to you negative list as well. Example Non-Commercial Intent - Looking for jobs or hiring opportunities - Looking for PR info or Press information Education related - research etc Has a technical problem with service / product Is looking for pornography or is searching compulsively (random keyword associations) To try to cut back on paying for clicks from searchers with the above intent here is a basic divided list of negative keywords that can be applied to most campaigns. Employment Negative keywords
job interview interviews search monster employment hiring human resources part time hr career careers salaries corp corps resume rsums salary opportunities opportunity government gov recruitment recruit positions position vacancies* - be careful with this one help wanted employers employer recruiters staffing volunteer volunteers
pr publicity press pr agency pr agencies pr firm pr firms public relations firm public relations firms
college colleges research book books university universities schools school library libraries
problems warranty returns parts complaints complaint sucks suck hate protest indictment illegal
crack serial serials cracks rss xml hack hacks (sorry, but you'll have to make you own list) Profanity Negative keywords (sorry, but you'll have to make you own list) Other Resources on Negative Keywords and the Google Negative Keyword Tool
Add to  Del.icio.us |  Digg |  Reddit |  Furl Have a bookmark! -  About the Author: Solomon Rothman is the CIO for Social Media Systems; an online marketing company that helps its client succeed by providing web development bundled with search marketing. He authors numerous blogs including 3net Search Engine Marketing Blog and loves the ongoing challenges of the online marketing world. Besides technology, Solomon's other passions including filmmaking & screenwriting. |
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