A Dubai retail brand running Google Ads on “abaya delivery Dubai” can watch a chunk of its daily budget vanish on searches for “abaya factory jobs” or “cheap abaya wholesale China” before lunchtime. Google Ads negative keywords are the only mechanism that stops those clicks reaching the account in the first place, yet most accounts treat them as an afterthought rather than a structured list built by intent.
This guide sets out a negative keyword list structure organised around three intent categories that waste spend on nearly every UAE account: job-seeker terms, DIY or free-alternative terms, and competitor brand terms. It covers the three match types negatives use, and turns the search terms report into a fifteen-minute weekly habit rather than an occasional clean-up.
The three negative match types, and why the wrong one backfires
Negative keywords use the same three match types as regular keywords: broad, phrase, and exact. A broad match negative blocks any search containing all the words in any order, which sounds useful until an advertiser selling “free consultation” services adds “free” as a broad negative and blocks every search that happens to include the word “free” alongside a relevant term.
Phrase match negatives block the exact sequence of words, plus close variants, wherever it appears in the search. Exact match negatives block only that precise search, nothing broader. For a shared negative list applied across several campaigns, phrase match is usually the safer default. It stops the obvious waste without the collateral damage broad match causes.
Building the negative keyword list by intent, not by guesswork
A negative list built one term at a time from memory misses the patterns that repeat across an account. Group candidate terms into three buckets before adding anything to a campaign.
- Job-seeker terms: “jobs,” “careers,” “salary,” “hiring,” “vacancy.” These appear constantly in UAE search data because jobseekers search the same service names as customers do.
- DIY or free-alternative terms: “free,” “template,” “how to do it yourself,” “course,” “tutorial.” These signal someone researching, not buying.
- Competitor and marketplace terms: named competitor brands, plus general marketplaces such as Dubizzle or Amazon for ecommerce accounts, where the searcher already has a destination in mind.
Build each bucket as a separate shared negative keyword list in Google Ads rather than pasting all three into one. A campaign that genuinely wants competitor traffic, a comparison landing page for instance, can then leave that list off while still using the other two.
Turning the search terms report into a weekly habit
Pull the search terms report from Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms, filtered to the last seven days. Sort by cost rather than clicks: a handful of expensive, irrelevant clicks matters more than a hundred cheap ones. Scan the top twenty rows for anything that does not match buying intent, add it to the relevant bucket, then apply the updated list across every campaign that shares it.
Fifteen minutes a week catches waste before it compounds. An account that skips this for a month typically rebuilds the same three buckets from scratch, because the same job-seeker and DIY searches resurface every time a new ad group or asset group goes live.
Where Performance Max breaks the usual rules
Performance Max campaigns do not support keyword-level negatives inside the campaign itself. Account-level negative keyword lists, added through Tools and settings, then Shared library, are currently the only way to exclude these terms from Performance Max search placements. An account running search and Performance Max side by side needs that shared list applied at account level, or the negatives built for search campaigns never reach Performance Max traffic. Google Ads Help’s guide to negative keywords sets out the current mechanics for adding these at each level.
Match type behaviour follows the same logic across campaign types. Google’s own explanation of keyword matching options is worth checking directly when a negative list stops blocking a term it should catch, since matching logic changes from time to time.
Wasted spend on irrelevant searches compounds fast in competitive Dubai verticals, where cost per click already runs high. It drags down the account-level signal behind how Quality Score gets calculated for every keyword sharing an ad group, and it makes it harder to prove PPC ROI to stakeholders scrutinising ad spend.
A negative keyword list is maintenance, not a one-off setup task. Accounts that treat the weekly search terms review as seriously as bid management keep more of their budget reaching people who actually want to buy. For a full audit of where an account’s budget leaks beyond negative keywords, Dominate Online’s PPC management service reviews search terms, match types, and bid strategy together.
Frequently asked questions
Why did the search terms report suddenly fill up with job-seeker searches after launching a Performance Max campaign in the UAE?
Performance Max pulls from a much wider signal pool than standard search campaigns, including broader audience and asset matching. Without an account-level negative list applied, it surfaces the same job-seeker and DIY searches that standard search campaigns already filter out. Add the shared negative lists at account level as soon as a Performance Max campaign goes live, not after the first month’s spend report.
Can the same negative keyword list work across Google Ads and Meta Ads accounts?
No. Google Ads negatives block specific search queries before an ad shows. Meta Ads has no equivalent search-query exclusion mechanism, since Meta serves ads based on audience targeting and interests rather than a live search query. The two platforms need separate waste-control approaches: negative keywords on Google, tighter audience exclusions on Meta.
Why do exact match negatives sometimes fail to block traffic that clearly was not wanted?
An exact match negative blocks only that one precise search, so a near-identical variant, a different word order, or an added word slips straight past it. Phrase match negatives catch far more of these variants while still leaving room for genuinely different searches, which is why a shared list built for broad waste categories should default to phrase match rather than exact.
How often should a Dubai-based ecommerce account rebuild its negative keyword list?
A weekly fifteen-minute review of the search terms report keeps the list current. Beyond that, a fuller rebuild after any major change, a new product launch, a seasonal campaign such as Ramadan or White Friday, or a Performance Max rollout, catches new patterns those changes introduce before they run up cost.