You can add negative keywords directly to a Performance Max campaign in Google Ads. You can also use account-level negatives, and Google has announced campaign-level negative keyword lists for managing the same exclusions across multiple Performance Max campaigns.
That is a major improvement over the old support-request workarounds. It does not mean every weak-looking query should be blocked.
Performance Max uses exclusions across Search and Shopping inventory only, and an overly broad negative can remove profitable demand that automated bidding could have converted. The safest workflow is to inspect the actual search term, understand why it appeared, choose the narrowest correct control, and monitor performance after the change.
This guide shows how to do that.
The four controls are not interchangeable
Before adding a negative, choose the control that matches the problem.
| Control | Best use | Scope | Main risk |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign-level negative keyword | A query is irrelevant to one Performance Max campaign | One campaign’s Search and Shopping inventory | Blocking a useful variation inside that campaign |
| Campaign-level negative keyword list | The same exclusion policy belongs on several selected campaigns | Campaigns to which the list is applied | A later list edit affects every attached campaign |
| Account-level negative keyword | The term is unsuitable across the entire Google Ads account | Search and Shopping inventory across relevant campaign types | Accidentally suppressing a valid service or product elsewhere |
| Brand exclusion | You need to exclude a brand and its recognizable variants | Selected Performance Max campaign | Removing valuable branded demand without measuring the effect |
Google recommends brand exclusions instead of ordinary negative keywords when the goal is to exclude branded queries. Brand exclusions are built to recognize misspellings, variants, subsidiary brands, and foreign-script versions more completely than a literal negative keyword.
Use a negative keyword for an actual query pattern. Use a brand exclusion for a brand. Do not use an account-wide control to solve a campaign-specific problem.
What changed for Performance Max negative keywords
Performance Max negative-keyword advice goes stale quickly. The current control set includes:
- Campaign-level negative keywords inside Google Ads
- Account-level negative keywords
- Campaign-level brand exclusions
- Campaign-level negative keyword lists, which Google announced as a way to share managed exclusions across multiple Performance Max campaigns
- A granular Performance Max search terms report available in the Google Ads interface and through the API
Google’s current Performance Max instructions explain how to add campaign-specific negatives or select an existing list. Google’s product announcement also confirms that campaign-level negative keyword lists can be applied to Performance Max.
If an older article tells you that every campaign-level exclusion requires contacting Google support, check its publication date before following it.
Where Performance Max negatives actually apply
Negative keywords in Performance Max apply to queries on Search and Shopping inventory. They do not operate as universal exclusions across YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, or every other surface Performance Max can use.
That boundary changes how you diagnose a problem. A search-query issue belongs in search terms and negative keywords. An unsuitable website, app, video, or content category needs the relevant placement or content-suitability control instead.
Do not add a negative keyword and assume it solved an inventory problem you never identified.
Start with the Performance Max search terms report
Google now provides a dedicated Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max report. To open it:
- In Google Ads, select Campaigns.
- Open Insights and reports.
- Select Search terms.
- Choose Search terms and landing pages for Performance Max from the report dropdown.
The report connects individual queries with performance data, ad format, and landing page. Google’s Performance Max search terms documentation says historical data in this report begins in March 2023.
Do not confuse this report with search terms insights. Insights group demand into themes and subthemes; the report is where you inspect the actual visible queries. Some low-volume queries can still be omitted or aggregated for privacy, so reported rows will not always reconcile to every impression or click.
For a fuller walkthrough of the columns and classification process, use our Google Ads search terms report audit.
Audit a query before excluding it
A query deserves a negative only when the evidence shows that its intent should not enter the campaign—not merely because it has not converted yet.
Review each candidate through five questions.
1. Is the intent actually outside the offer?
Classify the reason in plain language:
- Service or product not sold
- Wrong customer type
- Wrong location
- Education, employment, or do-it-yourself intent
- Supplier or wholesale intent
- Support request from an existing customer
- Competitor or brand intent
- Explicitly unsuitable or unsafe context
If you cannot finish the sentence “This query should be excluded because…,” do not add it yet.
2. Could the landing page be the real problem?
A relevant query with a weak conversion rate may be reaching the wrong page. Use the landing-page field in the Performance Max report.
If someone searches for a service you sell but lands on a general category page with no matching offer, the corrective action may be a page, feed, URL-expansion, or asset problem—not a negative keyword.
3. Is conversion tracking trustworthy?
Do not exclude demand from a campaign that is optimizing toward bad signals.
Check whether primary conversions represent meaningful outcomes, duplicate actions are being counted, values are credible, offline outcomes are returning, and spam is separated from qualified leads. A query with zero recorded conversions is not necessarily unprofitable when the tracking path is incomplete.
4. Is the pattern campaign-specific or universal?
Suppose a company has separate residential and commercial campaigns.
residential boiler repairmay be irrelevant to the commercial campaign but valuable to the residential campaign. Use campaign scope.boiler repair jobsmay be employment intent everywhere. It could qualify for a shared list or account-level control after checking every campaign.- A manufacturer’s brand may need a brand exclusion, not a collection of hand-built negative spellings.
Scope is a business decision. The fact that a term appeared in one campaign does not make it universally unwanted.
5. Is there enough evidence?
Use business economics, not a universal click threshold.
A single query that explicitly requests a service you never provide can be excluded immediately. A relevant query that spent twice your target acquisition cost without a conversion deserves investigation, but the correct action still depends on conversion lag, close rate, margin, and tracking quality.
Choose the negative match type deliberately
Negative match types are more literal than positive keyword match types. They do not expand based on related meaning in the same way positive broad or exact keywords can.
Use this example negative: training course.
| Negative match type | Enter it as | Blocks | Does not block |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad | training course | plumber course training and online training course | plumber certification class |
| Phrase | "training course" | free training course online | course for plumber training |
| Exact | [training course] | training course | online training course |
Negative broad requires all terms to appear, in any order. Negative phrase requires the phrase in the same order. Negative exact blocks only that search term.
Google notes that negative keywords do not match every close variant or synonym. Google’s troubleshooting guide gives the example that excluding house does not automatically exclude houses, although casing and misspellings are handled. Review real search terms again after adding negatives instead of assuming one word covers every linguistic variation.
Our Google Ads close-variants guide explains why positive keywords can expand by meaning while negative keywords remain comparatively literal, plus how to diagnose the gap safely.
When uncertainty is high, start narrow. Exact match is appropriate for one proven-bad query. Phrase or broad can be efficient for an unambiguous pattern, but the blast radius must be understood first.
How to add negative keywords to a Performance Max campaign
Google’s interface labels can move, but its current documented process is:
- Open Campaigns in Google Ads.
- Go to Keywords.
- Select the Negative keywords tab.
- Select the plus button.
- Choose the Performance Max campaign.
- Enter one negative keyword per line or select an existing negative keyword list.
- Use quotes for negative phrase match or square brackets for negative exact match when needed.
- Save the change.
Before saving, check the campaign name, scope, match type, spelling, and any regular keywords or search themes that might conflict with the negative.
When to use an account-level negative
Google permits one account-level negative keyword list with up to 1,000 entries. It applies across Search and Shopping inventory in relevant campaigns, including Search, Performance Max, Shopping, App, Smart, and Local campaigns. See Google’s account-level negative keyword documentation for the current coverage.
That makes account-level negatives powerful and dangerous.
Good candidates are terms the business can confidently reject everywhere, such as a service category it never sells or an employment-intent pattern in an account used only for customer acquisition.
Poor candidates are:
- A service offered by only one division
- A location served by one campaign but not another
- A brand that has different value across campaign types
- A query with weak short-term results but valid commercial intent
- A broad word embedded in profitable searches
Audit every active and planned campaign before moving an exclusion to the account level.
A safer review queue for agencies
Agencies should separate detection from approval. A useful record for every proposed Performance Max negative includes:
| Field | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Search term | Preserves the exact evidence |
| Campaign and account | Prevents cross-client and cross-campaign mistakes |
| Cost, conversions, and value | Adds performance context |
| Landing page and ad format | Reveals routing or inventory issues |
| Exclusion reason | Makes the decision reviewable |
| Proposed negative | Shows what will actually be blocked |
| Match type | Defines reach |
| Destination | Records campaign, list, or account scope |
| Approver and date | Creates accountability |
Do not let a script convert every non-converting query into a negative automatically. The expensive error is not failing to block one irrelevant click today. It is silently blocking qualified demand across many campaigns for months.
Monitor what happens after the change
Keep a negative-keyword change log and review it on a schedule appropriate to spend and query volume.
After each material batch:
- Confirm the negatives and lists are attached to the intended campaigns.
- Check whether the rejected query pattern stops appearing.
- Review nearby queries for unintended loss of relevant traffic.
- Compare conversion volume, conversion value, cost per acquisition, and total Search or Shopping traffic with the pre-change baseline.
- Revert or narrow any exclusion that removed valuable demand.
Do not judge a batch only by lower spend. Spending less because the campaign lost qualified reach is not an optimization win.
Automate the review, not the business decision
A good negative-keyword system can collect new search terms, compare them with campaign context, flag likely waste, explain the reason, and prepare a suggested match type and destination. Final account changes should remain reviewable.
LeadUp’s Google Ads negative keyword tool audits available Search and Performance Max search terms alongside campaign structure, targeting, active keywords, and existing negatives. It explains each recommendation, starts suggestions in phrase match, and lets you edit the text, match type, and destination before pushing approved changes.
For a quick first pass, you can also run a free search term audit.
Bottom line
Performance Max now gives advertisers substantially more direct negative-keyword control. Use that control surgically.
Start with visible search terms, verify the query is outside the offer, rule out landing-page and tracking problems, choose the smallest valid scope, and monitor the result. Campaign-level negatives, shared lists, account-level negatives, and brand exclusions each solve a different problem. Picking the correct one matters more than building the longest list.