The Elite Brands Google Ads Negative Keyword Framework for eCommerce
Every dollar you spend on a click that will never convert is a dollar you can’t spend on a click that will. It’s a silent drain on your Google Ads budget. Most eCommerce brands I see are leaking 15-20% of their ad spend on irrelevant search terms.
They often have a generic negative keyword list they downloaded from a blog post years ago. It’s not enough. In competitive eCommerce markets, a generic list is like using a fishing net with holes the size of dinner plates. You’ll catch something, but you’re losing the good stuff and catching a lot of junk.
This is why we developed a specific framework for our clients. It’s a three-stage process we run on every account to plug the leaks and redirect that wasted spend into terms that actually make money. The stages are Discovery, Application, and Refinement.
The goal isn’t just to stop wasting money. It’s to improve your Quality Score, increase your click-through rate, and ultimately, get a better return from your entire Google Ads management budget.
Stage 1: Discovery for effective eCommerce negative keywords
You can’t block what you can’t see. The discovery phase is about building a comprehensive, data-backed list of terms that are hurting your performance. This isn’t a five-minute brainstorm. It’s a deep dive into your account’s data and your product’s market position.
When I was scaling my own stores, this was a weekly ritual. I’d find terms that seemed close but were commercially useless. For example, selling premium leather dog collars and seeing clicks for “cheap nylon dog collars” or “how to make a dog collar”. Those clicks cost money and deliver nothing.
The discovery process we use at Elite Brands has four main parts: digging into search term reports, using deep product knowledge, analysing competitors, and a final strategic brainstorm. Skipping any of these steps leaves gaps in your defence.
Unearthing insights from search term reports
Your search term report is the single most valuable source of truth. It shows you exactly what people typed into Google before clicking your ad. We analyse this report with three specific questions in mind.
First, does the query’s intent match what we’re selling? If you sell high-end blenders, the query “blender repair parts” is a clear mismatch. The user wants to fix something, not buy a new one. We flag these immediately.
Second, where is broad match leaking budget? Broad match can be powerful, but it often pulls in irrelevant traffic. I’ve seen accounts selling “women’s running shoes” getting clicks for “best shoes for running a marathon”. This sounds close, but the intent is informational, not transactional. The user is researching, not buying. We identify these patterns and add negatives to tighten the targeting.
Third, which terms have a high cost but zero conversions? We look for queries with more than 10-15 clicks and zero sales over the last 30-60 days. These are the silent killers. A term costing you $50 a month without a single conversion is a $600 leak over a year. We find and block them. This process is critical for any campaign, but especially within our PMax Optimisation Framework where search term visibility is more limited.
Strategic product knowledge application
The data only tells you what has happened. Your product knowledge tells you what could happen. This step is about proactively blocking irrelevant traffic before you have to pay for it.
The most important question here is: what is your product not?
Make a list. If you sell premium merino wool socks, your product is not: * Cheap * Cotton * Waterproof * For kids * Available on Amazon * Sold in bulk
Each of these points generates a list of negative keywords. We add terms like “cheap”, “discount”, “free shipping”, “cotton”, “synthetic”, “amazon”, “ebay”, “bulk”, “wholesale”. This simple exercise can prevent thousands of dollars in wasted clicks.
We also do this for features and benefits. If your skincare product is organic but not vegan, “vegan” becomes a negative keyword. If your coffee machine uses pods but doesn’t grind beans, “bean to cup” and “grinder” are negatives. This ensures the people who click your ad are looking for exactly what you offer.
Stage 2: Application and tiered negative keyword lists
Finding negative keywords is only half the job. Applying them correctly is what makes the difference. Throwing every negative into a single account-level list is a common mistake. It’s clumsy and can cause you to accidentally block relevant traffic in other campaigns.
We use a tiered structure to apply negatives with precision. This organises your lists logically and gives you granular control over which ads show for which queries. It separates the universal negatives from the highly specific ones.
This structure involves three levels: the account, the campaign, and the ad group. Each has a distinct purpose. We also pay close attention to match types, because using broad match negative when you need an exact match can destroy a campaign’s volume.
Building your negative keyword list structure
Our structure is built on a hierarchy of exclusion.
1. Account-Level (Global) List: This is for terms you never want to show up for, regardless of the campaign. Think of terms like “free”, “jobs”, “hiring”, “reviews”, “scam”, “torrent”. These are almost universally irrelevant for an eCommerce store. We also add major competitor brand names here if the strategy is to avoid bidding on them entirely.
2. Campaign-Level Lists: These are for category-specific exclusions. Imagine you sell clothing. You might have a campaign for “dresses” and another for “jeans”. In the “dresses” campaign, you’d add “jeans”, “denim”, and “pants” as negatives. In the “jeans” campaign, you’d add “dress”, “skirt”, and “gown”. This prevents cross-campaign competition and ensures the most relevant ad is always shown.
3. Ad Group-Level Negatives: This is the most granular level. It’s used for tightly themed ad groups. If you have an ad group for “red leather handbags”, you would add “blue”, “green”, “suede”, and “canvas” as ad group-level negatives. This forces traffic for those terms to other, more relevant ad groups, or blocks it entirely if you don’t sell those variations. This level of precision is a core part of our PMax Brand Exclusions Strategy.
Strategic use of negative match types
The match type you use for a negative keyword is just as important as the keyword itself. Using the wrong one can have unintended consequences. There are three types, and we use them all strategically.
- Negative Broad Match: This is the most restrictive. If your negative broad match keyword is
running shoes, your ad won’t show if the search query contains both “running” and “shoes” in any order. We use this cautiously, for example, to exclude entire product categories from a brand campaign. - Negative Phrase Match: This excludes your ad from showing if the query contains the exact phrase. If your negative is
"mens shoes", your ad won’t show for “cheap mens shoes” but it could show for “shoes for men”. We use this for most of our negative keywords as it provides a good balance of control and flexibility. - Negative Exact Match: This only excludes the exact query. If your negative is
[free shipping], your ad is only blocked when someone types “free shipping” and nothing else. We use this to block low-performing but otherwise relevant queries without blocking their long-tail variations.
For a detailed breakdown of how these work, Google’s own documentation on negative keywords is the best source. The key is to use the most precise match type for the job.
Stage 3: Refinement and ongoing Google Ads negative keyword management
Negative keyword lists are not a “set and forget” task. They are living documents that need constant attention. Markets change, competitors adapt, and Google’s algorithm evolves. A perfect negative list from last quarter could be leaking budget today.
This is why the third stage of our framework is continuous refinement. We have a set cadence for reviewing and updating negative keywords based on account size and performance. This proactive management ensures our clients’ accounts stay efficient and we’re always maximising their return.
The process involves regular reviews, using automation to flag potential issues, monitoring performance impact, and adapting to market changes. It’s an ongoing cycle of optimisation. Ignoring it is like building a great boat and then never checking it for leaks.
We bake this into our weekly workflow. For an account spending $20,000 per month, my team is in the search term reports at least twice a week. We’re looking for new patterns, new sources of waste, and new opportunities.
This constant optimisation is how we deliver our results. It’s not about one big fix. It’s about hundreds of small, consistent improvements over time. If you’re looking to implement this level of continuous optimisation, a free Google audit covers the same checks we run to identify and plug budget leaks for our clients.
A regular review cadence is essential. For high-spend accounts (over $30k/month), we do a quick daily check for major anomalies. For all accounts, a deep-dive weekly review is standard. We sort the search term report by cost and look for new, non-converting queries. Monthly, we do a broader review to identify slower-moving trends.
We also use tools to help. Google Ads has automated rules that can help spot new negatives. For example, we can set a rule to send an alert for any query that has spent over $50 without a conversion in the last 14 days. This doesn’t replace manual review, but it helps us spot problems faster.
After adding a batch of new negatives, we monitor the impact closely. We look for improvements in click-through rate (CTR), a decrease in average cost-per-click (CPC), and most importantly, an increase in conversion rate and return on ad spend (ROAS). If we see a negative impact, like a sudden drop in impression volume, we investigate immediately to see if we’ve been too aggressive.
Finally, we adapt. When a client launches a new product line, we build a new set of campaign-level negatives for it. During seasonal peaks like Black Friday, we analyse search behaviour daily to adapt to rapidly changing query patterns.
Integrating negative keywords into your wider eCommerce strategy
Effective negative keyword management doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s a foundational piece that makes your entire marketing strategy more effective. When you stop wasting money on irrelevant clicks, that budget can be reallocated to what’s actually working.
It has a direct, positive impact on your bidding strategies, your ad copy relevance, and even your efforts on other platforms.
Think of it this way: clean traffic is more predictable. When your campaigns are only attracting users with high purchase intent, your automated bidding strategies like tROAS or tCPA work much better. Google’s AI has better data to learn from, which leads to smarter bidding decisions and a more stable return. I’ve seen accounts where a thorough negative keyword clean-up allowed us to increase the tROAS target by 20% within a month, simply because the incoming traffic quality was so much higher.
This also sharpens your messaging. When you know you’ve excluded people looking for “cheap” or “discount” items, you can write ad copy that confidently speaks to the premium quality of your products. Your ads and landing pages become more relevant to the audience seeing them, which boosts Quality Score, improves ad rank, and lowers your costs.
The efficiency gains are the most obvious benefit. If you save $2,000 a month by adding negatives, that’s $2,000 you can reinvest in your best-performing campaigns, test a new channel, or put toward your Meta Ads management. It makes your entire marketing budget work harder.
This discipline of defining what you are not also helps clarify your audience targeting on other platforms. The insights from your Google Ads search term report can inform the negative interests or custom audience exclusions you use on Meta, creating a more cohesive, holistic strategy.
Why Elite Brands excels at Google Ads negative keyword optimisation
We are operators, not just consultants. I built my own eCommerce brand to 8-figures, and a huge part of that was being obsessive about ad spend efficiency. The framework I’ve outlined isn’t theoretical. It’s the exact process we’ve refined across hundreds of eCommerce accounts at Elite Brands.
Our team lives inside Google Ads accounts every day. We’ve seen every possible way an account can leak money, and we’ve built systems to plug those leaks. Last year, we audited over 100 eCommerce ad accounts. In more than 90% of them, we found significant savings, often in the thousands of dollars per month, just from improving their negative keyword strategy.
We don’t use a one-size-fits-all list. We build a custom strategy for every client, based on their specific products, market, and goals. It starts with a deep dive into your business and your data. We take the time to understand what makes your customers tick and, just as importantly, what kind of searcher will never become a customer.
This meticulous approach is built on a commitment to transparency and measurable returns. We don’t just add negatives and send you a bill. We show you the impact on your ROAS, your conversion rate, and your bottom line.
Not sure if your Google Ads structure is costing you?
We audit Google Ads accounts weekly — PMax, Shopping, Search. The free Google Audit shows you where budget leaks and what to fix first.
If you’re spending money on Google Ads and you suspect some of it is being wasted on the wrong clicks, you’re probably right. A quick free Google audit from our team can show you exactly where the leaks are.
