Negative Keywords in adCenter - What, Where & How

adCenter allows advertisers to add negative keywords at the campaign, ad group and even keyword level. Check this What, Where and How guide to negative keywords in Microsoft adCenter, and see how they compare to AdWords.

Search Query	Ad showed?
free tickets	No
free tickets online	No
find free tickets	No
tickets free delivery	Yes
free theatre tickets	Yes
free theatre seats	Yes
cheap theatre tickets	Yes

What match types?

Negative keywords cannot be assigned a match type in adCenter. In practice, negative keywords in adCenter work in the same way as Phrase-matched negative keywords in AdWords, preventing your ads from showing whenever that term appears in the search query.

The table to the right shows whether or not your ad would be displayed if your negative keyword were 'free tickets'.

Where?

You can add negative keywords at the campaign, ad group and even keyword level. However, unlike AdWords, adCenter negative keywords are mutually exclusive. Adding negative keywords at any one level will disable those set in higher levels.

• Campaign-level negatives apply to all keywords in your campaign, unless you apply negative keywords at the ad group or keyword level.
• Negative keywords at the ad group level replace any campaign negative keywords.
• Negative keywords at the keyword level disable any negatives set at the campaign-level and adgroup-level.

How many?

Each negative keyword can contain up to 100 characters. The entire negative keywords list, including commas, can contain up to 1024 characters. Given that the average length of an English word is five characters, adCenter allows on average up to 170 negative words (including commas).