They are extremely valuable as they ensure your ad doesn’t show for something you don’t offer, like "free".

Using them causes your CTR (clickthrough rate) to rise, giving you better relevancy and Quality Score, and the possibility to pay less for your clicks (hence buy more of them for the same budget).

You should have as many of them as possible, and if using Broad match keywords they are critically important.

There’s no limit to how many you can have in your campaigns, and I have accounts with many thousands of negatives – sometimes more than ordinary keywords.

But beware! Choose the wrong ones and they will turn off your ads when you *want* them to show…

Back to AdWords Management

Since there are many pages of search results and ads, just because your Ad received Impressions, doesn’t mean it was *actually read*.

If your AdRank is too low and your Ad is not appearing on Page 1 of results, no-one may actually have even seen it…