What Are Automatic Negative Keywords?
OTTO PPC includes an automatic negative keyword feature that analyzes your Google Ads search term data to help protect your ad spend. When poor-performing queries are identified, they are surfaced for your review as part of the negative keyword workflow before any changes are applied to your live campaigns.
How to Locate and Review Your Negative Keyword Queue
Follow these steps to find, review, and act on flagged negative keywords in OTTO PPC:
- Open your OTTO PPC project. From the Search Atlas dashboard, navigate to the OTTO PPC section and select the project you want to work with.
- Go to the Negative Keywords tab. Inside the project, locate the Negative Keywords section. This is where OTTO PPC surfaces all search terms it has flagged for review.
- Review each flagged term. For each term in the queue, you will see the search query, the campaign or ad group it is associated with, and the performance data that triggered the flag (such as spend without conversions or low relevance).
- Approve or dismiss each term. If a flagged query is irrelevant or non-converting and you want to block it, select the option to apply it as a negative keyword. If the query is actually relevant to your business, dismiss or skip it so it is not added as a negative.
- Confirm and push changes. Once you have made your selections, confirm your choices. Approved negative keywords are then pushed to your Google Ads account and will begin filtering out matching search queries going forward.
- Repeat regularly. New flagged terms will appear in the queue as OTTO PPC continues to monitor your search term data. Reviewing the queue on a regular basis helps keep your budget focused on the queries most likely to convert.
How the Negative Keyword Workflow Operates
At a high level, OTTO PPC monitors your Google Ads search term data, flags queries that appear to be poor performers or irrelevant, and presents those queries for your review. Approved negative keywords are pushed to your Google Ads account to begin filtering out matching search queries going forward. No changes are applied to your live campaigns until you have reviewed and approved them.
Why a Phrase Might Appear in Your Queue
A search term typically surfaces in the negative keyword workflow because it generated ad spend without producing a conversion, its content is unrelated to your product or service, or it falls below the performance thresholds OTTO PPC uses to evaluate query quality. Reviewing flagged keywords regularly helps ensure your budget is focused on the queries most likely to convert.
What to Have Ready When You Reach Out
To help our team assist you as quickly as possible, please have the following information on hand:
- The name of the OTTO PPC project or campaign you are working with
- The specific negative keyword phrase or phrases in question
- The current status shown for those keywords in your account
- A description of the behavior you are seeing and what outcome you expected
If you need further assistance, open the chat widget in the bottom-right corner of the platform and type human teammate to be connected with a member of our team.