As Google’s Ad Product Liaison, I often share updates and insights with the community of digital advertisers and, best of all, get to hear your feedback first-hand.
We heard quite a lot after our recent announcement that, after a period of beta testing, we’re rolling out negative keywords in Performance Max (PMax) campaigns with a restriction.
We had set a cap of 100 negative keywords per campaign.
While the ability to add negative keywords in PMax directly in Google Ads without having to request them through Support or an account rep has been a long-time ask, we heard very quickly that the cap of 100 negative keywords felt too restrictive for many.
Here’s a look behind the scenes at the reasoning behind the initial cap, what we learned from your feedback, and the subsequent decision to increase the limit to 10,000 negative keywords per campaign.
Why The Cap In The First Place?
AI, by its nature, thrives on flexibility, adapting to real-time data and user behavior.
Performance Max is an AI-powered, goal-based campaign type that’s designed to find conversions based on the goals you set.
The intention of capping negative keywords in PMax at 100 was to give advertisers additional control while still giving PMax the flexibility to achieve your campaign’s stated goal – a limit of 100 negatives felt like a reasonable starting point.
To arrive at that number, we analyzed PMax campaigns in which negative keywords had been added via Support or their account rep.
We found that the 100-keyword limit would cover the vast majority of campaigns using negative keywords.
We also saw that the majority of submitted negative keywords had no actual serving impact – their ads already weren’t triggering for terms advertisers had concerns about.
In many other cases, other targeting exclusions would have been more suitable for blocking unwanted traffic.
We saw this in our beta testing as well. In short, 100 felt like a good compromise between offering enough flexibility without dramatically increasing the risk of accidentally blocking valuable traffic.
Negative keywords are just one way to control where your ads show on Search. Other controls such as brand exclusions, account level negative keywords and keyword prioritization are also available.
The initial cap of 100 negative keywords aimed to:
- Preserve AI Optimization: Excessive negative keywords can act as rigid constraints, preventing the AI from exploring valuable search paths and hindering its ability to identify emerging trends. Essentially, it can stifle the algorithm’s ability to find the most efficient conversions. Very large negative keyword lists can potentially negatively impact the machine learning systems and hurt performance.
- Prevent Accidental Traffic Exclusion: We aimed to prevent advertisers from inadvertently excluding valuable traffic through overly broad negative keyword scopes and missing potential high-intent customers.
What Your Feedback Told Us
We heard advertiser feedback loud and clear that while negative keywords are welcomed, the cap of 100 felt too restrictive.
We heard from brands that quickly hit the 100 limit before including the key themes they wanted to negate. In short, it wasn’t a practical solution for many.
After looking at options, the team agreed to align with the limits in Search campaigns and raise the threshold to 10,000 negative keywords per PMax campaign.
That’s obviously a significant jump from 100 and way more than nearly every business will need or should use, but aligning on one common threshold simplifies things and gives advertisers plenty of room to experiment.
Actionable Insights And Considerations For Measuring Impact
Adding negative keywords to a Performance Max campaign can, of course, impact where your ads show on Search and Shopping inventory.
While the increased limit provides greater control, it’s crucial to use negative keywords strategically. Here are several things to keep in mind when applying negative keywords in PMax:
- Judicious Application: Avoid overly broad exclusions that might hinder the AI’s ability to find valuable conversions. Prioritize high-impact negatives that address specific ROI concerns. Keep in mind that account-level negative keywords you’ve added for brand suitability purposes already apply to your PMax campaigns.
- Match Type Precision: Understand the nuances of broad, phrase, and exact match negative keywords in PMax. Negative match types work differently than their positive counterparts. For negative broad match keywords, your ad won’t show if the search contains all your negative keyword terms, even if the terms are in a different order. Phrase match negatives exclude queries containing the exact phrase, while exact match excludes only the specific query. Use them strategically to balance precision and reach.
- Performance Monitoring: Closely monitor key metrics like conversions, conversion value, and conversion rates to ensure negative keywords have a positive rather than negative impact on performance.
- Conflict Resolution: Be aware that if a user search matches both a positive signal and a negative keyword, the negative keyword will take precedence, and your ad will not be eligible to serve for that query.
- Beyond Negative Keywords: Remember that PMax offers other control mechanisms to inform when your ads can trigger on Search.
- Regular Audits: Just as with your Search campaigns, be sure to regularly audit your negative keywords to identify where you might be blocking potential valuable traffic. And Search Term Insights can help you identify query themes and individual search terms you might want to block with negative keywords.
Your Questions Answered
I received several questions about this update from advertisers on LinkedIn and X (Twitter) and want to address some of those here.
“The real challenge is how negative keywords interact with PMax’s black-box decision-making. Will we get more visibility into which search terms PMax is actually serving against? And how will negatives impact machine learning optimization long term?”
While PMax is designed to automate many aspects of campaign management, we recognize the importance of providing advertisers with meaningful insights.
The introduction of negative keywords is one of several recent steps towards providing additional controls.
Search Terms Insights for PMax provides a view of the search term categories as well as specific search terms that triggered your ads in Search. You’ll find performance metrics at the search term level.
Search Terms Insights is designed to make analyzing search term data easier by already grouping similar searches into broader categories, saving you the time to sift through individual search terms.
This data can be downloaded and available via scripts and the Google Ads API.
As for the long-term impact of negative keywords on campaign optimization, it’s important to strike a balance.
While negative keywords provide crucial control, an overly restrictive approach could limit the system’s ability to learn and adapt to new opportunities.
As noted above, our recommendation remains to use negative keywords strategically to exclude truly irrelevant traffic, allowing the AI to continue exploring and finding valuable conversions within the defined boundaries you set.
Reporting and insights are areas the team is actively focused on. Stay tuned for more on this.
“Google never needed
Our intention was never to encourage spending on irrelevant queries.
Performance Max is a goal-based campaign type which means it’s designed to find more of the conversions that you indicate are valuable to your business.
The initial cap of 100 negative keywords was tested in beta and seemed to provide a reasonable level of control while still allowing the AI the necessary flexibility.
We acknowledge that our initial assessment was not sufficient for many advertisers, and that’s why we listened to your feedback and made the significant increase to 10,000.
“Why can’t negative keywords be limitless at any/every account level? Are there technical/operational issues that would be impacted?”
This is a fair question. There are limits on certain entities in Google Ads accounts to help ensure system and process stability. We have more details on various entity limits here.
“Will Google give us the ability to see the previously applied negative keyword lists we used to do via Support or our reps.”
Yes, you’ll be able to see and edit negative keywords and negative keyword lists that were previously added by Support or a rep.
“Why weren’t negative keywords available from the very start when PMax launched.”
The core principle behind PMax is leveraging AI to discover conversions across Google’s channels.
When PMax launched in 2021, the vision was to give advertisers a streamlined way to tell Google what they want to optimize for and then allow the system to learn and find those desired customers across all of Google’s inventory.
Exclusions were seen as unnecessary and potential impediments to optimization.
Over time, and with advertiser feedback in mind, features within PMax have expanded. And the pace of new insights and controls has been accelerating in recent months.
“What about negative keyword lists?”
Many of you asked about the possibility of using negative keyword lists within Performance Max campaigns, as you can in Search campaigns.
We are actively working on this and expect to have more to share on support for negative keyword lists in PMax later this year.
How PMax Is Evolving
I recently shared the overview below of many of the recent reporting and control updates for PMax at the Paid Search Association Conference.
These features are aimed at giving you more tools and information to steer PMax to find more of the conversions you want to generate for your business.
Features like brand guidelines help ensure your responsive display ads and auto-generated video ads reflect your brand’s visual identity.
Stay tuned for more on search terms data and analysis capabilities as well as additional insights this year.
This is an area we are actively focused on. And keep the feedback coming.
More Resources:
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