If your search marketing campaign contains broad or phrase matched terms you may be wasting a significant portion of your budget on irrelevant clicks. Most PPC advertisers focus a majority of their time building keyword lists but fail to recognize the importance of negative keywords.

In addition to mitigating financial risk, a comprehensive negative keyword list creates a situation where your ads are shown for more relevant searches. As a result you can expect to see an increase in click-through-rate (CTR) ― an important factor in Quality Score calculation.

So how do you find negative keywords?

Several methods can be used to identify negative keywords. I will focus on four: keyword research tools, search query performance report, third party analytics and competitive intelligence tools. Each method offers a unique perspective on researching negative keywords and all should be considered.

Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research tools such as Google's keyword tool, wordtracker and keyworddiscovery are typically the first place advertisers look for negative keyword help.

These tools are a great resource for two main reasons:
1) They leverage vast keyword databases and return a high number of queries
2) They provide traffic levels for each keyword phrase

When identifying negatives its important to start with a broad search term like shoes ― collect negatives and refine according to your products/services.

It’s also important to pay attention to the traffic levels ― keywords with high search demand can have the highest impact on your campaigns. This works in both directions, if a keyword is irrelevant but has a high search demand the associated risk is high and vice versa.

To mine keywords simply enter your keywords and note results that seem irrelevant or counter-intuitive to your business goals. Add these keywords as negatives to your campaign.


Search Query Performance Report
Once your account has been active for several days, the Search Query Performance Report becomes the most relevant resource for identifying negative keywords. The purpose of this report is to identify actual search queries that have triggered a click-through based on your keyword set.

This report is not full-proof and search marketers have criticized that some of the most useful information is not represented in a useable format often labeled "other unique queries". Nonetheless, the search query performance report is valuable and should be analyzed every few weeks for new negative keywords.

Your Analytics tool
If you are not using a third party web analytics tool to track your traffic sources - install one ASAP. Google Analytics is a robust web analytics tool and best of all its free. In addition to providing insight into organic, paid and direct traffic sources – third party analytics tools provide visibility into keyword level data. These reports can help you identify negative keywords for your Adwords campaigns.

In order to access deep keyword level data, it is often necessary to initiate tracking through advanced profiles and/or reports. More information on creating advanced profiles in Google Analytics can be found here.

Competitive Intelligence Tools
Tools such as keycompete, compete.com and ispioage provide insight into your competitors' keyword lists. While these reports are typically used to generate new ideas and overlooked keywords, they can also be a useful source for bolstering your negative keyword list.

Competitive intelligence tools typically run anywhere from a few dollars per report to several hundred dollars per year.

Keyword lists evolve as accounts mature. Negative keyword lists warrant the same level of attention but are often neglected. As your paid search account evolves remember to keep an eye on your KPIs and check your negative keyword lists in regular intervals. The four sources discussed above should give you a head start on negative keyword research.

Tony, Clickable SEM Guru
 
Note: Clickable employees volunteer several hours a week to helping other search marketers succeed. "Clickable Gurus" participate in numerous online search communities to provide straightforward answers to numerous questions, and, each week, one of the gurus posts a search marketing tip to the Clickable Blog.

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As a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertiser, you are paying for each and every click generated via your Adwords

So you have just compiled a large list of keywords by using a keyword suggestion tool such as Wordtracker

For all marketers – novices and experts alike – successfully launching a search campaign

Some advertisers set up their PPC accounts with a single match-type. Depending on their budget and who

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I find it interesting that search marketers have reason to criticize the search query report given the overwhelming advantages this report has, if used correctly. Having analyzed query data extensively over long and short periods, I have not found an instance where "other unique queries" has contributed more than a few percent of overall impressions and clicks (even with CTR's of 50% + for these "other" queries). This has been true for advertisers spending $5mm + p/a and advertisers spending under $100k p/a across a number of industries.

Out of curiosity, have you ever done a count of how many exact match queries  - which simply denotes that the keyword exists in the group/campaign either as broad/phrase/exact - are triggering ads and compared that to the number of keywords in your portfolio? In addition to this this have you ever looked at the cost of queries that are not actively being managed i.e. do not exist in the campaign/group that the ad was triggered against?