negative keyword

Definition

Terms you explicitly exclude from triggering your ads, preventing wasteful spending on irrelevant searches. The marketing equivalent of telling your GPS which routes to avoid, except it actually listens.

Example Usage

We added 'free' as a negative keyword after attracting thousands of clicks from people with no intention of ever opening their wallets.

Origin

Search engine marketing terminology from the early 2000s with Google AdWords platform development

Fun Fact

Properly configured negative keywords can reduce wasted ad spend by 20-50%, making them possibly the highest-ROI activity that involves doing less.

Source: Google Ads platform documentation and search advertising best practices

Related Terms

Beginner

media mix

The combination of different advertising channels and platforms used in a campaign, from traditional print to digital display to carrier pigeons if your budget allows. It's the marketing equivalent of not putting all your eggs in one basket.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

brand

The carefully crafted identity and perception of a company, product, or person that marketing teams obsess over and consumers either love or completely ignore. A brand is more than just a logo—it's the entire emotional experience and associations people have with your business, from Apple's minimalist elegance to that local pizza place with the angry owner. It's what makes people pay $200 for sneakers that cost $20 to manufacture.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

Content Marketing

The art of selling things to people by pretending you're not selling things to people. You write a helpful blog post about productivity tips, and somehow by the end, the reader is buying your project management software.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Advanced

Lookalike Audience

A group of strangers that Facebook's algorithm thinks are similar to your existing customers, based on the terrifying amount of data it has on everyone. It's digital matchmaking, except instead of finding you a date, it finds people equally likely to buy your yoga mat.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

typesetting

The ancient art of arranging text on a page so it doesn't look like a ransom note, now mostly automated by software that still can't figure out proper kerning. Originally a painstaking manual process involving tiny metal letters and ink-stained fingers, it's now what graphic designers spend hours perfecting while everyone else uses Comic Sans. The difference between good and bad typesetting is invisible to most people but will make designers weep.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

lifestyle shot

Product photography featuring humans using the item in aspirational contexts rather than sterile white backgrounds. Because apparently customers can't envision themselves without staged authenticity.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Translate This Term

See “negative keyword” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Beginner

Book Girlfriend

A "book girlfriend" is a female fictional character a reader becomes emotionally attached to, similar to the "book boyfr...