Negative keyword list generator by industry

Every Search campaign I set up gets a negative keyword list before it spends a dollar. On a high-cost account it matters even more. The real estate law firm I run ads for paid an average of $13.19 per click between Dec 1, 2025 and Jun 17, 2026. At that price, twenty clicks from people looking for a paralegal job or a free deed form is more than $250 gone, with no chance of a client at the end.

Google's matching has become looser over the years. Phrase and broad match now show ads for searches that share the meaning of a keyword, not just the words. That helps you find searches you didn't think of. It also means your "real estate attorney" ad can appear for "real estate agent license", and the only thing standing between you and that click is a negative keyword.

The lists here come from the patterns I keep finding in search terms reports. Every industry has the same few kinds of waste: people looking for work, students, people who want to do it themselves, bargain hunters, and researchers who aren't ready to buy. Then each industry has its own. Med spas attract people shopping for at-home devices. Limo companies attract people pricing a used stretch limo. "Plumber" pulls in a surprising number of Super Mario searches.

One rule surprises people: negatives don't match close variants. A negative for job doesn't block jobs, and lawyer doesn't block lawyers. That's why the presets include both forms of the words that show up most.

Negatives work best on top of a clean structure. If your ad groups each hold a tight set of related keywords, the search terms report is easy to read and the right negatives jump out. The keyword grouping tool splits a long keyword list into ad groups by service, place and intent, which is the step before this one.

Once the waste is gone, your cost per lead drops and the max CPC calculator becomes more useful: it tells you how much a click is worth to you, and a cleaner account means more of those clicks convert. If you're still planning a budget, the Google Ads budget calculator shows what a monthly spend buys.

For law firms specifically, I wrote up how I structure campaigns, negatives included, on the Google Ads for law firms page. For real estate firms, my article on which real estate attorney keywords to bid on and block walks through the full list. If you'd rather have someone go through your search terms with you, that's part of every Google Ads management engagement I take on.