Google Ads: keywords and negatives

Keywords decide which auctions you enter; negatives decide which ones you refuse. Most accounts obsess over the first list and neglect the second — then wonder where the budget went. This lesson builds both, sized for the campaign structure you just created.

Sort keywords by the intent behind them

Group your candidate terms into three tiers and treat them differently:

• Transaction-now: “homes for sale in” your area, “sell my house”, “real estate agent near me”. Expensive, rare, and worth it — these anchor your bids.
• Researching: neighbourhood names with “condos” or “detached”, “housing market” queries. Cheaper clicks, longer timelines; fund them once the first tier is stable.
• Curiosity: anything a bored scroller might type. Leave it out. You are not buying traffic; you are buying intent.

A fuller taxonomy with Canadian phrasing patterns is maintained at Google Ads keywords for real estate — use it as your source list rather than brainstorming from zero.

Choose match types like they cost money, because they do

Phrase match is the workhorse for farm campaigns: it holds the meaning of your term while letting Google catch variations. Exact match protects your most valuable transaction-now terms. Broad match hands the steering wheel to the machine — defensible only once conversion data is deep, and never in week one. Whatever you choose, the search terms report (below) is where you find out what your match types actually did.

The negative list is a ritual, not a task

Once a week, open the search terms report and read what real people typed before clicking your ads. You will find money leaking into searches you never wanted: rentals when you sell resale, job seekers, course hunters, DIY-valuation browsers with no address in your market. Add each leak as a negative keyword at the campaign or account level, and it never bills you again. Start from the common Canadian leak patterns catalogued at negative keywords for realtor ads, then let your own report grow the list. Ten minutes a week, compounding forever — there is no better hourly rate in this track.

Keep the lists honest with each other

Every keyword should have an ad and a landing page that plainly match it — a searcher who typed a neighbourhood name should see that neighbourhood in the ad they click, which is the copywriting lesson. When you find a keyword no ad genuinely serves, the fix is a new ad group or deletion — never a vaguer ad.

What done looks like

Five to fifteen keywords per ad group sorted by intent tier, match types chosen deliberately, a negative list seeded from the common leaks, and a recurring ten-minute weekly slot for the search terms report. That ritual, kept, is the difference between a campaign that tightens every week and one that quietly funds Google’s rent.

The mistake that costs the most

Set-and-forget. Keywords are a living system: your market’s language shifts, competitors enter auctions, new leak patterns appear. The account that gets ten minutes of weekly attention beats the brilliantly-built one that gets none — every time.