Don't let your negative keyword strategy drift

Most advertisers spend time building comprehensive negative keyword lists, only for them to become inconsistent over time.

New campaigns launch without the right exclusions, teams apply different lists across accounts, and valuable work slowly becomes outdated.

A simple governance process helps ensure your exclusions stay consistent as your account grows.

1. Create a single source of truth

Instead of maintaining multiple versions of the same exclusions, keep one master list that's regularly reviewed and updated.

Whether it's irrelevant searches, competitor terms or internal exclusions, everyone should be working from the same set of negatives.

Squared.io tip: Import existing shared libraries or create account-level negative lists that automatically apply to current and future campaigns within an account, group, or globally.

2. Standardise across accounts

If you manage multiple brands, markets or clients, similar exclusions often need applying across every account.

Rather than recreating the same lists repeatedly, standardise common negatives centrally (e.g. MCC) and allow account-specific additions where needed.

This keeps governance consistent while reducing manual work.

3. Protect your brand strategy

Brand traffic often requires a different bidding strategy from generic campaigns.

Applying brand exclusions consistently helps prevent non-brand campaigns from competing for branded searches and keeps reporting cleaner.

Squared.io tip: Brand negative lists can be automatically applied to every non-brand campaign using campaign labels, so new campaigns stay protected without manual intervention.

4. Don't forget ad copy compliance

Governance isn't limited to keywords.

Restricted words, outdated messaging or compliance issues can also appear in ad copy and assets.

Regularly reviewing live ads helps catch issues before they affect performance or compliance.

Squared.io tip: Squared.io continuously checks ads and assets against custom "ad negatives", alerting teams whenever prohibited words or phrases appear.

How Squared.io helps

Squared.io automates negative keyword governance by applying exclusions across existing and future campaigns, supporting Performance Max, standardising lists across accounts, and monitoring ad copy for compliance issues - helping teams spend less time maintaining governance and more time improving performance.