Account-level negative keywords are search terms you exclude once, in the account settings, so that no eligible campaign in the Google Ads account shows ads for them. They suit words that are never relevant to your business, whichever campaign might otherwise pick them up.
How account-level negative keywords work
An ordinary negative keyword sits on one campaign or ad group. A negative keyword list is a shared list you attach to the campaigns you choose. Account-level negatives go one step further: you add them in the account settings and they apply automatically to Search, Shopping and Performance Max traffic across the account, including campaigns you create later.
They follow the same negative match types as other negatives: broad, phrase and exact. Negatives do not stretch to close variants the way positive keywords do, so “job” does not block “jobs”, and a misspelling needs its own entry.
When Google added this feature, it was one of the few ways to keep Performance Max away from unwanted searches. At the time of writing (October 2026), Performance Max also accepts campaign-level negatives, but the account level remains the simplest place for exclusions that apply everywhere.
Why it matters
Most accounts have a set of searches that never lead to business. A kitchen fitter in Leeds does not want to pay for “kitchen fitter jobs”, “kitchen fitter salary” or “kitchen fitting course”. A software company may never want “free” or “crack”. As accounts gain more broad match, AI Max and Performance Max, Google reaches further from your keywords, and account-level negatives are a backstop that protects every campaign at once, including ones someone forgets to add a list to.
They save time as well. Without them, the same jobs and training exclusions have to be copied onto every new campaign, and the one campaign someone forgets is the one that spends a week paying for “kitchen fitter apprenticeship” clicks.
They also help with brand safety, keeping ads away from offensive or sensitive searches without relying on each campaign being set up correctly.
Common mistakes
- Adding a word that is irrelevant to one campaign but valuable to another, such as “cheap” in an account that also sells a budget range.
- Blocking your own brand or product names with a careless broad match negative.
- Forgetting plurals and misspellings because negatives do not cover close variants.
- Putting campaign-specific exclusions at account level, which makes them hard to find and explain later.
- Adding negatives once and never checking the search terms report for new waste.
How to act on it
Draw up a short list of terms that are wrong for the whole business: jobs and careers terms, training and courses if you do not offer them, DIY and free if they never convert, and any sensitive words you never want to appear next to. Add them at account level, with plurals and common misspellings. Keep exclusions that only apply to certain services in shared lists or on the campaigns themselves.
Before adding anything, sort the search terms report for the last few months by cost and look for themes rather than single queries. A theme that recurs across several campaigns and never converts belongs at account level; a one-off belongs where it appeared.
Review search terms monthly, and before adding a term, check it does not appear in conversions anywhere in the account. Keeping exclusions in the right layer is part of a sound account structure, and part of the routine work in Google search ads management.