Straight answers for local service businesses
In Google Ads, build a shared negative keyword list in the Shared Library, then apply that one list to every campaign you run. After that, any word you add to the list is instantly blocked across all of them, so you only edit in one place. For Performance Max and other campaign types that ignore campaign-level negatives, use account-level negative keywords instead, which apply everywhere automatically.
If you run a search campaign for drain cleaning, one for water heaters, and one for emergency plumbing, you do not want to paste the same 80 junk words into all three. And you definitely do not want to add "plumber salary" to one campaign, forget the other two, and keep paying for that click twice.
That is what a shared negative keyword list fixes. Build it once, attach it everywhere, edit it in one place forever.
It is a saved list of words and phrases that lives in your Google Ads account library, separate from any single campaign. You attach the list to as many campaigns as you want. When you add a new word to the list, every attached campaign blocks that word immediately. No campaign-by-campaign editing.
Think of it like a key that opens every door in the building. You cut one key, hand copies to each campaign, and when you change the lock you change it once.
Google reshuffles its menus every year or so, so here is the path by name rather than by exact click position:
That is it. Ten minutes of setup that saves you hours over the next two years.
The other half of the workflow matters more than the setup. When you are digging through your search terms report and you spot a bad query, Google asks where you want to add the negative: this ad group, this campaign, or a list. Pick the list. Almost every leak I see in a small account comes from people picking "campaign" out of habit, over and over, until the same junk word is blocked in two campaigns and running wild in the third.
Use two or three. One giant list is tempting, but it gets you in trouble the moment your campaigns are not identical.
Here is a structure that works for most trades:
Rule of thumb: if a word is wrong for every campaign, it belongs on a shared list. If it is only wrong for one, keep it on that campaign.
No. Shared negative keyword lists apply to campaigns only. There is no way to attach one to a single ad group.
If you need ad-group-level blocking, like keeping "water heater" searches out of your drain cleaning ad group, you add those negatives directly to the ad group. In practice, if you find yourself wanting a shared list at ad group level, your campaigns probably need to be split apart anyway.
No, and this is the mistake that costs real money. Launch a new campaign in March, forget to attach your list, and you spend six weeks paying for "plumber apprenticeship" clicks you already blocked everywhere else.
Make it part of your launch checklist. Right after you set budget and location targeting, go apply your lists. Every time.
Some campaign types do not respect campaign-level negative keywords the way search does. Performance Max in particular has been a moving target, with Google gradually opening up negative keyword controls.
The reliable answer is account-level negative keywords. These live in your account settings, not the Shared Library, and they apply across the whole account without you attaching anything. They are capped at a smaller number of words than a shared list, so treat them as your short list of absolute never-show terms: the job seeker words, the DIY words, the competitor names you never want to appear next to.
So a clean setup looks like this:
Two things, and both are quiet.
First, over-blocking. Because the list touches everything, one careless broad-match negative can strangle several campaigns at once. Add the single word service to a shared list and you have just blocked "plumbing service near me." If impressions fall off a cliff after you edit a list, that is the first place to look.
Second, forgetting it exists. Six months later you wonder why a campaign gets no traffic for a term you know people search. The negative is not in the campaign, so you do not see it in the obvious place. Get in the habit of checking your lists whenever a campaign behaves strangely.
Open your search terms report, scan for garbage, and add anything bad to the right list. That is the whole job. Ten minutes does it once your account has been running a while.
The beauty of the shared list is that the work compounds. Every bad word you catch this month is permanently blocked in every campaign you run next year, including campaigns that do not exist yet. A landscaper who has been feeding the same list for three seasons has a filter that is genuinely hard for a new competitor to match.
If ads are part of how you get work and nobody has ever shown you your search terms report, that is the first place to look. You will probably find money sitting there.
You can apply a single list to every campaign in your account, and most small trade accounts only have a handful. Google does cap the total number of lists per account and the number of keywords in each, but the ceilings are far above what a local business will ever use.
Not directly. Negative keyword lists live inside one account. If you manage two accounts, you rebuild the list in each, or copy the words over by pasting them in. Keep a master copy in a plain text file or spreadsheet so you are never rebuilding from memory.
No. Negative keywords only control when your paid ads are allowed to show. Your organic search results and your Google Business Profile are completely unaffected.
Only if you never want to show up for them. If you deliberately bid on competitor names in one campaign, putting those names on a shared list will block that campaign too. Keep competitor negatives at the campaign level when you are testing that strategy.
A shared list is a library item you manually attach to specific campaigns and can hold a lot of words. Account-level negatives apply to your entire account automatically, cover campaign types that ignore campaign negatives, and hold fewer words. Use both: account level for absolute never-shows, shared lists for the long junk list.
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