Match types and negative keywords in Google Ads

Keyword match types in Google Ads

When you add keywords in Google Ads, you can choose a so-called match type, which determines under what circumstances your ad is shown. The individual types differ in how precisely the user has to type the search term.

Exact match

The ad is shown only if the search term exactly matches the keyword or a close variant of it (for example, with a different word order or a minor grammatical change).

• Syntax: [keyword]
• Example: [website design]
• Result: the ad is shown for queries such as “website design” or “design website”, but not for “cheap website design”

Phrase match

The ad is shown if the search term contains the whole phrase in the given order. Other words may be added before or after the phrase.

• Syntax: "keyword"
• Example: "website design"
• Result: the ad is shown for the query “cheap website design”, but not for “design website”

Broad match

The broadest match type, which allows the ad to be shown even when the search term has a similar meaning or contains synonyms.

• Syntax: keyword
• Example: website design
• Result: the ad may also be shown for queries such as “how to make a website” or “online store design”

Negative keywords

To exclude unwanted queries, you can use negative keywords. They are written with a minus sign (-) and prevent the ad from being shown when the given term appears in a search in a certain way. If you don’t want to show ads for queries containing, for example, the city of Ostrava, you can add the following to your list of negative keywords:

-Ostrava

This way the ad will not be shown, for example, for queries like:

• “website design Ostrava”
• “cheap web design Ostrava”

Letter case in the terms does not matter. The ad will not be shown whether the user searches for “Ostrava”, “ostrava” or “OSTRAVA”. To thoroughly exclude different forms of the same word, you can also add its variants (here, Czech inflected forms of the city name):

-Ostravě-Ostravsko

Phrase match for negative keywords

Negative keywords can be entered not only as single words but also as whole phrases. If you need to prevent the ad from showing whenever a specific word combination appears, you can use so-called negative phrase match. It is written in quotation marks:

-"tvorba webu"

This ensures that the ad is not shown if the search query contains the phrase “tvorba webu” (Czech for “web development”) in the same order. However, it will not block queries in which these words are separated by other terms (e.g. “tvorba moderního webu”, i.e. “modern web development”).

Excluding single-word queries

In the search terms report, you will often spot single-word queries that are not relevant to you on their own but are relevant in combination with other words. You can easily exclude them while still showing your ad for the full phrases. You just need to be careful to choose the right match type. If, for example, you want to exclude the standalone word “websites”:

• Syntax -[websites]: Exact match in a negative keyword ensures that the ad is not shown only when the word “websites” is entered on its own, while relevant combinations are not affected.
• Syntax -websites: Watch out, this would exclude every query that contains the word “websites”, including desirable ones such as “websites for small businesses”.

Differences in how regular and negative keywords are evaluated

Google Ads treats match types differently for regular and negative keywords.

• For regular (targeted) keywords, synonyms, misspellings and terms with a similar meaning are taken into account.
• For negative keywords, Google works more precisely and strictly – it does not take synonyms or grammatical forms into account. The excluded word must appear in the search query in its exact form, otherwise it will not be excluded.
• Upper and lower case make no difference – Google is not case-sensitive for any type of keyword. For example, -Ostrava, -ostrava and -OSTRAVA are treated as identical.

For example, the term -dropshipping will not exclude the query “how to start dropshipping” if it is entered with the wrong match type or is not recognized linguistically as a match.

Handling foreign-language words in search

Google Ads may also show ads for queries in languages other than the language of the campaign. Unless the targeting language is explicitly restricted, the ad may also be shown for English or other foreign-language queries.

For negative keywords, however, you need to enter foreign terms exactly, because Google does not translate or semantically expand these words. For example: -dropshipping will not prevent the ad from showing for the query “dropshipping for beginners” unless the negative term is used exactly or with the matching language variant.

Summary – syntax overview

An overview of the most commonly used keyword and negative keyword syntax:

• [web design] – exact match. The ad is shown only for the exact phrase or its very close variants.
• "web design" – phrase match. The ad is shown if the search query contains this phrase in the correct order, possibly with other words before or after it.
• web design – broad match. The ad may also be shown for similar-sounding or semantically related terms.
• -ostrava – negative keyword. The ad is not shown if the search query contains the word “Ostrava”.
• -web design – negative keyword in broad match. The ad is not shown if the query contains both words “web” and “design”, in any order and even separated by other words.
• -[web design] – negative keyword in exact match. The ad is not shown only if the query is exactly “web design”.
• -"web design" – negative keyword in phrase match. The ad is not shown if the query contains exactly this phrase.

Official Google Ads documentation

• Keyword match types – Google Ads Help
• Using negative keywords