Negative Keywords for Home Services: A Practical Starting List

Write down what you do not sell

Start with your service boundaries: residential or commercial, repair or installation, territory, supported equipment and minimum practical job size. A company selling installation may still want people researching equipment. A company offering only servicing may not want parts-only orders.

Keep a short explanation next to every group of exclusions. When someone later adds a service or changes coverage, that explanation makes the list easier to revisit. Without it, useful enquiries can remain blocked long after the original reason disappears.

Review these starter categories

The following are candidates to investigate, not a list to paste blindly. Use them only when the intent is irrelevant to the campaign. For example, a business that also recruits should keep its recruitment strategy separate from the customer acquisition campaign.

• Employment: job vacancies, technician salary, apprenticeship jobs.
• Training: certification course, trade school, exam practice.
• DIY: repair tutorial, wiring diagram, how to fix it yourself.
• Products only: wholesale parts, used equipment for sale, replacement part number.
• Unserved work: a specific trade, property type or equipment category you do not support.

Understand the negative match types

For Search, negative broad match excludes a query containing all the negative terms, even in another order. Negative phrase requires the same sequence, with additional words allowed. Negative exact excludes that exact query without additional words. These rules differ from positive keyword matching.

Negative keywords do not automatically cover every close variant. Check relevant singulars, plurals and other wording rather than assuming one exclusion handles them all. Consult Google's examples before applying a multiword negative to the whole account.

Reference: Google Ads: negative keyword behaviour and examples

A small example shows why scope matters

Imagine a residential plumber who does not sell parts. The exact negative [plumbing parts] blocks that query, but does not automatically exclude a longer query such as plumbing parts installation. A phrase negative for plumbing parts could exclude that longer query too. Whether that is desirable depends on whether the business wants installation enquiries.

Likewise, excluding installation across the account would be a mistake if another campaign promotes water heater installations. Apply service-specific exclusions to the relevant ad group or campaign. Reserve shared lists for intent that is truly irrelevant everywhere.

Do not confuse research with bad intent

Words such as cost, price and reviews can come from people comparing providers before buying. Automatically excluding them can remove serious prospects. Cheap may be a poor fit for a premium service, but the decision should come from lead quality and the offer, not a universal rule.

Competitor names need a deliberate decision as well. A caller searching for another company may have dialled the wrong provider; another may be comparing options. Check actual enquiry outcomes and trademark requirements before designing any competitor strategy. Do not add claims about a competitor that you cannot support.

Make review a repeatable task

During a new campaign's early review, inspect available search terms regularly and connect them with enquiry quality where possible. Google does not expose every query, so the report is useful but incomplete. Keep a simple change log: term, reason, match type, scope and date.

After adding exclusions, watch for lost relevant traffic as well as reduced waste. A falling cost is not enough if qualified enquiries disappear. Combine this review with ad relevance, location settings and intake records. Advertux's launch review includes removing irrelevant traffic using the actual campaign data rather than promising that one starter list will solve it.