What's The Best Strategy For Negative Keywords In Google Ads?

I have a doubt. When adding negative keywords to an ad group, should we directly exclude the search terms and add them as negatives (exact match), or should we modify the search terms and add them as phrase-match negatives? What is the better strategy, or is there no better strategy?

There is no such thing as a better strategy. It depends on how you are adding these negatives and how strict you need to be with the traffic. If you are adding exact negatives, then Google may show your ads on other search terms that are similar to the excluded terms. However, if you use phrase-match negatives, all search terms that contain the excluded word, such as "iPhone," will be excluded.

Therefore, there is no better strategy; it depends on how you set up your campaigns or ad groups. If you have one campaign for iPhones, another for Samsung, and another for Google or Pixel, you will need to decide whether these negative search terms or words need to go at the ad group level, campaign level, or account level.

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