How to EFFECTIVELY add negative keywords
Negative keywords are one of the most powerful ways to increase the CTR (and so your position) on AdWords for broad and phrase keywords.
Unfortunately there is not much documentation about how to use them in an effective way.
Let’s see the different levels of understanding of negative keywords form beginner to advanced:
- Don’t understand negatives at all, they just don’t add them
- Add obvious negatives like “free” to their campaigns
- Check their webserver logs or analytics software and look at exact search queries, then add irrelevant words to negatives
However even the 3rd level of understanding is really missing the most important thing!
There is an important distinction to make in negatives:
- Negatives that don’t make the sale
- Negatives that don’t get the click
Negatives that don’t make the sale are the ones that you can get from analytics - when you get the clicks but those clicks don’t make sales: by adding those negatives you’ll increase your conversion rate but not necessarily your CTR.
Negatives that don’t make the click are like a hidden disease: some people search but never click, so you have no way to know that these impressions happen and so to put them as negative. Reason being that with an analytics software you can track the search query that generated a click but there is no way to know which search query generated an impression that never got a click.
Note: Even if an impression doesn’t make the click it’s costing you money because it lowers your CTR
One way I found to help in this task is to write an advert that is as generic as possible for your topic: what will happen is that some people will click on it as they find it somewhat relevant no matter what they search.
Example if you write “Buy” in your advert the chances of someone that had the word “Free” in this search query clicking is very low, so you may simply never realize that anyone is searching “Free” and put it as negative - however if the advert is completely generic you have more chances to get a click from both “free” and “buy”.
Of course this generic ad is just a first phase of your campaign to learn negatives, after that you’ll try targeted ad variations to improve your CTR and conversion rate.
I’m still confuse..but try to learn ♥
What is exactly you don’t understand?
> there is no way to know which search query generated an impression that never got a click.
The Search Query Report does give you some of those. Not all, I admit, but it’s a start.
In my experience this report is very limited. Even if we consider only impressions that got a click (and for which I can see the search query in the web logs) I see plenty of search queries that Google doesn’t provide. Anyone had a different experience?
I agree that the Search Query report can be very limited as it shows lots of annoying results that simply ways “Unique Queries” - very helpful!
However it’s a good start especially if you have never added any negative keywords.
Nice article Giotto.
If you’re tired of seeing endless “1,239 Other Unique Queries” then use a simple script that shows your the EXACT searches right there in the Google Analytics interface, along with site metrics, ecommerce data ROI figures, you name it.
You can drill down and see them by campaign, by ad group, by keyword, etc. Very useful, very fast.
I wrote about it last year:
http://www.roirevolution.com/blog/2008/03/google_analytics_keyword_sleuth_vs_search_query_pe.html
The Recommendations on this are no longer relevant now that the new Adwords UI is out. You can see which keywords your are showing impressions on, you can also see on the content match which sites you are showing up on and which are getting clicks and you can negative (or Exclude) right from the interface.
Unfortunately I still don’t have the new interface on my account. I looked up and found this information: http://www.google.com/adwords/newinterface/standard/search-query-data.html
Seems that what they did is nothing else than integrating the search query report with the new interface. In that case it’s exactly as it used to be. Can anyone using the new interface confirm?
Hello,
You do not see what keywords gave you impressions with no clicks. You only see clicked keywords on the new interface. Same as before but integrated.
Great site BTW
Peter
Great article. I never considered that the query reports don’t factor in what’s not clicked.
that’s one of the best ideas i’ve heard in a long time. i’ve always wanted to know how to find out what searches don’t get clicks but this is the first time i’ve considered your solution. i’m definitely keeping an eye on you
i like your thinking dude.
jim
great post. following you on twitter too.
1. new interface rocks, especially the inline search query report, which now includes ALL clicked queries. Yeah, no more other unique queries.
2. other methods to find unrelated keywords, to use as negatives…
a. Google kw tool, the first stop b. Google suggest c. the wonder wheel
d. related searches on yahoo or google results
use it or lose it.(your ctr)