What to do when you run out of your 20 shared negative keyword lists?

Posted June 20th, 2016 by Kirti & filed under Google Ads Tips, Keywords, Negative Keywords.

So, what would you do? If you say that 20 negative keyword lists with each having a limit of 5,000 keywords giving us a total 1,00,000 shared negative keywords, is sufficient, then what about this:

Inconsolable to have hit the 20 list limit for Shared Negative KWs – any sign of @adwords lifting this any time soon? #ppcchat

— Arianne Donoghue (@ArianneDonoghue) June 3, 2016

Negative Keyword Lists clubs similar or general set of keywords together. You are more likely to use each list individually, serving a specific intent such as brand negatives, competitor negatives, partner brand negative & more (Check : 9 types of negative keyword list your campaign must have). The possibility of then reaching the limit is higher for larger accounts dealing with multi-products or services.

@ArianneDonoghue Like brand terms go on campaign lvl (10k limit), product terms in adgroup (20k), everything general & manual goes on lists.

— Martin Roettgerding (@bloomarty) June 7, 2016

Till the time AdWords lifts this tab, here are a couple of things that you can think of doing if you see yourself reaching the limit:

1) Use Less of Broad Match Keywords

You can revisit your broad match keywords bidded for and replace them with a combination of phrase match types or modified broad match type keywords. With broad match the reach is infinite, hence the likelihood of driving clicks for unwanted terms becomes higher. So you can, if not must, think about making edits to your list of bidded keywords in order to reduce the need to block unwanted search terms.

2) Remove Unwanted Negative Keywords

Though this might appear to be a tedious task, but re-reviewing your shared negative keywords may make you notice those negative keywords that you can do without. Sometimes a keyword is added as a negative in buffer, to reduce the tendency of driving clicks in the future. In such a case, you can remove those negative keywords from the list or the entire list altogether. So, no harm in doing a thorough scrutiny.

3) Merge Common Lists

If you can, then you must think about merging two similar lists together. Of course, keeping in mind the 5,000 negative keywords tab per list. The lists that are shared between the same campaigns can be clubbed together or if there is a random negative keyword list created, you can think about adding them in other lists.

4. Changing Negative Keyword Match Type

You might come across similar type of keywords such as ‘t-shirt for girl’ and ‘red t-shirt for girl’, you can remove the redundant one here, i.e., ‘red t-shirt for girl’ as the other keyword will serve the purpose. Or you can change the match type of your negative keyword to cover a group of negative keywords such as ‘evening walking shoes men‘ can be used for ‘walking shoes’, ‘evening shoes’, ‘men walking shoes’ etc. This, much organized structure of your negative keywords can help in making your negative lists more concise, leaving space for more negative keywords to be added.

5. Add As Campaign/ Ad Group Negatives

You can pull out a smaller list of shared negative keywords and add them individually to the campaigns that were sharing it. If the list is not a larger one and is not being shared by many campaigns, you can think of removing them and adding them at the campaign level. Further, you might find the need of adding negative keywords from a list, to certain ad groups only, you can then do the replacement work and save the space to add other much relevant lists.

Such strategic steps to organize your shared negative keywords helps you in :

Not reaching the limit, of course! (until Google thinks about increasing the limit or removing it)
Organizing your shared negative keyword lists which was earlier overlooked
Removing redundant, unwanted negative keywords, which do not make a difference to the campaign.

How have you been able to manage your negative keywords lists? Share your thoughts on how you have been adjusting in the comment space below.

Note: Karooya’s Negative Keywords Tool is now Free for accounts with ad spend less than $10,000 per month. Save 10-20% of your search ad spend for free. Sign up and start saving your ad budget now.

Related Articles: