Negative Keywords and Match Type Protection
Understand how WonderAds automatically generates negative keywords to prevent match type overlap and ensure your traffic goes to the right campaigns.
Why Negative Keywords Matter
When you run multiple match types (Exact, Phrase, and Broad) for the same keyword, Google can match a Broad search query to any of them. Without protection, a search for "plumber london" might trigger your Broad match campaign instead of your Exact match campaign — even though you have a perfectly tailored Exact match ad group for that exact term. This is called match type cannibalization, and it wastes budget on less targeted traffic while starving your high-intent Exact match campaigns.
The Problem: Match Type Overlap
Consider a keyword "plumber london" with all three match types active and split by campaign. Without negative keywords, here is what can happen:
- A user searches for "plumber london" (exact term).
- Google could serve the ad from your Broad campaign instead of your Exact campaign.
- The Broad campaign might have a lower bid, worse ad rank, or a different budget allocation — leading to suboptimal performance.
- Your carefully structured Exact match campaign loses the very traffic it was designed for.
- You lose control over which campaign and budget each search query hits.
This problem gets worse as your account scales. With thousands of keywords, manual negative keyword management is practically impossible — which is why WonderAds automates it.
How WonderAds Solves This
When you generate campaigns with Broad match enabled, WonderAds automatically creates negative keywords to protect your more specific match types. For every keyword in a Broad match campaign or ad group, two negative keywords are generated:
- Negative Exact — Prevents the Broad campaign from serving on searches that exactly match the keyword. This protects your Exact match campaign.
- Negative Phrase — Prevents the Broad campaign from serving on searches that contain the keyword phrase. This protects your Phrase match campaign.
Example: How It Works in Practice
Suppose you have the keyword "plumber london" with all three match types and campaign-level splitting. WonderAds generates the following structure:
- Exact Campaign: Keyword [plumber london] — no negatives needed (most specific already).
- Phrase Campaign: Keyword "plumber london" — no negatives needed against Exact (Phrase is already more specific than Broad).
- Broad Campaign: Keyword plumber london + Negative Exact [plumber london] + Negative Phrase "plumber london".
The result: when someone searches for exactly "plumber london", the Exact campaign wins. When they search for "best plumber london reviews", the Phrase campaign wins. Only truly broad searches like "find someone to fix my pipes in london" land in the Broad campaign.
When Are Negatives Generated?
Negative keywords are only generated when the Broad match type is enabled. If you only use Exact and Phrase, no negatives are needed because Phrase match is already more restrictive than Broad. The negatives are created automatically during the generation step — you do not need to add them manually.
Where Do Negatives Appear in the Export?
In the exported CSV file, negative keywords appear as separate rows in the keywords section, marked with negative match type notation. Google Ads Editor recognizes these automatically during import. The negatives are placed in the same campaign or ad group as the Broad keyword they protect against, depending on your split strategy.
After importing into Google Ads Editor, you can review all negative keywords by filtering the keyword list by match type. They are fully editable if you need to make manual adjustments.
Split Strategy and Negatives
The placement of negative keywords depends on your split strategy:
- Campaign split — Negatives are added at the campaign level in the Broad campaign, preventing overlap across all ad groups.
- Ad group split — Negatives are added at the ad group level within Broad match ad groups.
- No split — All match types share one campaign and ad group, so negatives are added at the ad group level to prevent internal overlap.