Search Marketing FAQ

Yes. Campaign-level negative keywords block queries across every ad group in the campaign. Use for category-wide exclusions (free, jobs, DIY) that apply uniformly. Each campaign can hold up to 10,000 negative keywords. For brand defense across multiple campaigns, prefer shared negative lists over duplicating campaign-level negatives.

in Negative Keywords

Yes, since 2023 Google supports account-level negative keywords with a 1,000-keyword limit. They apply across every Search and Shopping campaign in the account, including Performance Max. Use for cross-campaign brand defense, sensitive query categories, or compliance restrictions. Account-level negatives are the simplest brand-exclusion mechanism.

in Negative Keywords

A shared negative keyword list is a reusable collection of negatives that you create once in the Shared Library and apply to multiple campaigns. Useful for cross-campaign brand defense, industry-specific wastage lists, or compliance restrictions. One shared list can hold up to 5,000 negatives and apply to 50+ campaigns simultaneously.

in Negative Keywords

In Google Ads, go to Tools & Settings > Shared Library > Negative keyword lists > New list. Name it, add your negative keywords with their match types, save, then apply the list to selected campaigns. The list updates propagate automatically - editing one list affects every campaign it is applied to. Powerful for scale.

in Negative Keywords

Campaign-level: up to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign. Ad group-level: up to 10,000 per ad group. Shared negative keyword lists: up to 5,000 per list, and one campaign can apply up to 20 lists. Account-level negatives: 1,000 maximum across the entire account. These limits accommodate enterprise-scale exclusion strategies.

in Negative Keywords

Weekly for active campaigns running broad match. Bi-weekly for phrase-and-exact-only campaigns. The Search Terms report grows with every query - new wastage patterns emerge constantly. Schedule a 30-minute weekly review where you scan the top 100 queries by spend, mark wastage as negatives, and approve winners as new positive keywords.

in Negative Keywords

Layer three tiers: account-level negatives for universal wastage (jobs, free, DIY), shared lists for cross-campaign brand defense, and campaign-level negatives for campaign-specific exclusions. Review Search Terms weekly. Use phrase or exact match for ambiguous terms. Audit periodically for over-blocking. Never block your own brand or competitor names you actually want to bid on.

in Negative Keywords

Add the competitor brand name as a negative across all your non-competitor campaigns to prevent your generic ads from serving on competitor brand queries (which usually convert poorly). Some advertisers maintain a separate competitor-targeting campaign with deliberately different copy; the negatives ensure that traffic falls into that campaign rather than your category campaigns.

in Negative Keywords

No. In Search and Shopping, negatives match the user query directly. In Display and Video, negatives exclude topic-related content rather than exact queries. Performance Max accepts account- and campaign-level negatives applied to Search/Shopping inventory but Google's AI has more autonomy in other surfaces. Test impact per campaign type before scaling.

in Negative Keywords

Five recur: blocking close variants with broad match (over-blocks); forgetting to add plurals/misspellings (under-blocks); leaving the Search Terms report unread (missing new wastage); adding overly generic terms like 'best' or 'cheap' (blocks legitimate intent); and never auditing whether negatives still apply as positive keywords evolve.

in Negative Keywords

Audience targeting layers user-attribute filters on top of keyword or contextual targeting. Audiences include demographic segments (age, gender, parental status), in-market intent, affinity interests, your customer match lists, remarketing lists, and similar audiences. Used as targeting (restricts who sees ads) or observation (collects performance data without restricting reach).

in Audience Targeting

Audience segments are pre-defined groups of users Google has classified by behavior, interest, intent, or demographic. Segments include in-market (active purchase intent), affinity (long-term interest), life events (recent milestones), detailed demographics, and your first-party data (Customer Match, remarketing). Each segment can be added as targeting or observation to any campaign that supports it.

in Audience Targeting

Six main types: demographics, in-market segments, affinity segments, detailed demographics, life events, custom segments. Plus first-party: Customer Match (your email lists), remarketing lists (site/app visitors), similar audiences (lookalikes of your data, deprecated in favor of optimized targeting), and combined audiences. Use signals together for precise targeting; use individually for observation.

in Audience Targeting

Customer Match lets you upload hashed customer email addresses, phone numbers, or mailing addresses to create an audience of your existing customers. Google matches the hashes against logged-in user data and serves ads to matched users across Google Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail, and Discover. Strong for retention, win-back, and lookalike modeling.

in Audience Targeting

In Google Ads, go to Tools & Settings > Audience Manager > Customer lists > New customer list. Upload a CSV with hashed or unhashed customer emails (Google hashes unhashed data on upload). The list takes 24-48 hours to match. Once matched, apply the audience to Search, Display, YouTube, or Performance Max campaigns as targeting or signal.

in Audience Targeting

In-market audiences contain users Google identifies as actively researching or comparing products in a specific category - signal includes recent searches, page visits, video views, and clicks. Examples: 'Auto dealers', 'CRM software'. In-market segments deliver near-purchase intent and convert at 2-5x affinity-segment rates. Use as core audience targeting in lead-gen and e-commerce.

in Audience Targeting

Affinity audiences group users by long-term interests and lifestyle patterns - 'sports enthusiasts,' 'foodies,' 'tech early adopters.' Built from sustained browsing behavior, not active purchase intent. Affinity is good for upper-funnel awareness and brand campaigns; weaker than in-market for direct-response conversions. Use as broad reach signal in Display and YouTube campaigns.

in Audience Targeting

Install the Google Ads or GA4 remarketing tag on your site. Audiences populate automatically based on user behavior (page visits, time on site, specific events). In Google Ads, go to Audience Manager > Segments > New Segment > Website visitors. Define the rule (e.g., visited /pricing in past 30 days). Lists need 1,000+ users to be active for Search Ads.

in Audience Targeting

Audiences automatically built from users who visited your site or app, identified via the Google Ads tag (web) or Firebase SDK (app). Filter by page, event, time on site, frequency, or recency. Apply to remarketing campaigns to re-engage past visitors with relevant creative. Combined with Customer Match, these form your first-party data foundation.

in Audience Targeting

'Your data segments' is Google's current term for first-party audience data: Customer Match lists, remarketing lists, similar audiences, and audiences imported from GA4. They replaced the older 'remarketing audiences' label in 2023 to reflect Google's broader privacy-aware first-party data emphasis. Your data segments give you the strongest signal for conversion-focused campaigns.

in Audience Targeting

Lookalike segments are Google's term for audiences modeled on your first-party data to find similar users at scale. Built from your Customer Match list or remarketing audience, lookalikes find users with similar browsing patterns, demographics, and interests to your converters. Useful for prospecting once you have a seed audience of 1,000+ converters.

in Audience Targeting

Similar audiences were Google's previous lookalike mechanism, automatically generated from your remarketing or Customer Match seed audiences. Google deprecated similar audiences in 2023, replacing them with optimized targeting and lookalike segments. Existing similar audiences continue to serve in some campaign types but are no longer created automatically for new seed lists.

in Audience Targeting

Mostly no. Google deprecated similar audiences in 2023. Existing similar audiences may still serve in some campaign types, but Google no longer generates new ones automatically. Use optimized targeting (which broadens reach beyond your audience signals using Google's AI) or lookalike segments (modeled from your first-party data) as the modern replacements.

in Audience Targeting

Affinity audiences group users by long-term lifestyle interest (sports fans, foodies, tech enthusiasts). In-market audiences group users by active short-term purchase intent (currently shopping for cars, CRM software, vacations). In-market converts 2-5x better than affinity for direct-response campaigns. Affinity wins for brand-building and awareness; in-market wins for conversion campaigns.

in Audience Targeting