What negative keywords should electricians add to Google Ads first?

For electrical contractors setting up or cleaning up a Google Ads account who want to stop paying for clicks from people who will never book a job.

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Which searches should an electrician block in Google Ads before spending a dollar?

Start with four groups of searches that can’t turn into a paying electrical job: job seekers (jobs, salary, apprenticeship, school), do-it-yourselfers (how to, DIY, wiring diagram), parts shoppers (supply, parts, wholesale), and people looking for something else entirely, such as their utility company, car or boat wiring, or services you don’t offer. Put the words that apply to every campaign in an account-level list or a shared negative keyword list, and remember that negative keywords don’t match plurals, synonyms or close variants, so add “job” and “jobs” separately. Then check your search terms report every week and add new negatives from what people actually typed, without blocking price searches like “panel upgrade cost” that often come from real buyers.

Cleaning up who your ads show to is part of how we’d run Google Ads for an electrician: we judge campaigns on booked jobs, not clicks, and Google Ads management is included in all of our packages. Our Google Ads management page covers how we run campaigns, and our electrical contractor marketing page shows how ads fit with the rest of an electrician’s marketing. The rest of the electrical marketing questions library goes question by question.

What is a negative keyword in Google Ads?

A negative keyword is a word or phrase you tell Google not to show your ads for. Google’s page on negative keywords says they let you exclude search terms from your campaigns so you can focus on the keywords that matter to your customers. Its advice for choosing them is to look for searches that are similar to your keywords but come from people looking for something different.

Electrical searches are full of those. “Electrician” is also a job title, a trade school program and a word in thousands of how-to videos. If your keyword is electrician and someone searches “electrician apprenticeship near me,” your ad can show, and you can pay for the click, unless a negative keyword stops it. Choosing which electrical searches to bid on in the first place is covered in which keywords to bid on; this page is about the other side of the list.

Which negative keywords should an electrician add first?

In our view, four groups belong in almost every electrical account from day one, because none of these searchers can book a job with you:

• Job seekers: job, jobs, hiring, career, careers, salary, pay, apprentice, apprenticeship, union, school, training, course, exam, test, certification, “how to become”.
• Do-it-yourselfers: “how to”, DIY, “wiring diagram”, diagram, tutorial, video, YouTube, “step by step”.
• Parts and supply shoppers: supply, supplies, parts, wholesale, distributor, catalog, and the names of the big-box and supply stores in your area.
• People looking for something else: utility searches such as “power outage”, “electric bill” and “electric company”; vehicle work such as car, auto, truck, boat and RV; and other professions such as “electrical engineer” or “electrical engineering”.

Then add the services you don’t do. If you don’t install solar, alarms, low-voltage or appliance repair, those words are negatives too. The campaigns page has a shorter version of this list in the campaigns that work for electricians; the rest of this page is about getting the list to actually work.

Why do I have to add plurals and synonyms myself?

Because negative keywords don’t stretch the way normal keywords do. Google says negative keywords won’t match to close variants or other expansions: if you exclude flowers, your ad won’t show for “red flowers” but can show for “red flower.” To exclude a word, you add its singular, plural and synonyms yourself. Google does say negative keywords automatically account for casing and misspellings, so you don’t need those.

For an electrician, that means writing out the family of each word:

• job, jobs, hiring, career, careers, employment
• apprentice, apprentices, apprenticeship, apprenticeships
• school, schools, class, classes, course, courses, training
• diagram, diagrams, “how to”, “how do i”, diy

It’s tedious work for an afternoon, and it’s the difference between a list that looks right and one that blocks what it should.

Should I use broad, phrase or exact match for negatives?

Google’s negative keyword page explains the three types, and they work differently from normal keywords:

• Negative broad match is the default. Your ad won’t show if the search contains all of your negative words, in any order. A broad negative of electrician jobs blocks “jobs for electrician” but not “electrician job,” because the plural doesn’t match.
• Negative phrase match blocks searches that contain your words in the same order, with other words allowed around them.
• Negative exact match blocks only that exact search, with no extra words.

In our view, single words like jobs, salary and apprenticeship work well as broad negatives, because there is no buyer search that contains them. Use phrase match for two-word ideas where the order matters, such as “how to”, and exact match when you only want to block one specific search and keep its longer versions. When you add a negative straight from the search terms report, Google adds it as negative exact match by default, so check the match type before you save.

Where should I add negative keywords in my account?

Google gives you three places, and each has a job:

• Account level. Google’s page on account-level negative keywords says one list in your account settings applies to search and shopping inventory across Search, Performance Max, Smart and Local campaigns, among others, with a limit of 1,000 negative keywords per account. This is the home for the four groups above, because no campaign should ever show for them.
• Shared negative keyword lists. Google’s page on negative keyword lists says you can build a list once and apply it to several campaigns, with up to 5,000 negatives per list and up to 20 lists per account. Useful for a list of towns you don’t serve, or services only some campaigns should skip.
• Campaign and ad group. For negatives that only make sense in one place, such as keeping EV charger searches out of a general service-call campaign that has its own EV campaign alongside it.

Google’s page on adding negative keywords also notes that Performance Max takes account-level negatives, which matters if you run one.

How do I find new negative keywords after the first list?

From your search terms report. Google’s page on the search terms report explains the difference: a keyword is what you added to your ad group, and a search term is what a person actually typed. The report shows the search terms that triggered your ads, and Google suggests adding the irrelevant ones as negatives so your ad stops showing to people looking for something you don’t sell.

To use it, go to Insights and reports, then Search terms, tick the terms that don’t fit and choose Add as negative keyword. You can send them to the ad group, the campaign or a negative keyword list.

In our view, check it every week for the first couple of months, then every two weeks once new junk stops showing up. Google says the report lists terms that a significant number of people searched, so some rare searches won’t appear in it at all; that’s one more reason the starting list matters.

Which searches should an electrician not block?

Price and comparison searches, at least at first. It’s tempting to block cost, price and cheap because they sound like tire-kickers. In our view, a homeowner searching “panel upgrade cost” or “EV charger installation price” is often close to booking; they’re checking whether the job fits their budget. Judge those searches on booked jobs before you cut them.

Also be careful with:

• Emergency and after-hours words, if you take those calls. Block them only if nobody answers the phone at night.
• “Code” and “permit”, which come from both do-it-yourselfers and homeowners trying to do it right. Watch the report before you decide.
• Anything that overlaps your own keywords. Google warns that negatives which overlap your regular keywords will stop your ad from showing.

Google also says that with too many negative keywords, your ads might reach fewer customers. Block what clearly can’t book, and let the booked-job numbers settle the rest. Handling price shoppers covers what to do once those calls come in.

Do negative keywords work the same in Performance Max and Local Services Ads?

Not quite. For Performance Max, Google’s page on adding negative keywords points you to account-level negative keywords, so your account-level list is the main lever there.

Local Services Ads don’t use keywords at all. Google’s page on the move of Local Services Ads into Performance Max says campaigns with pay-per-lead goals are keywordless and use information from your Google Business Profile instead of keyword lists. In the current Local Services Ads setup, you shape who sees you by your job types and service areas, and Google lets you turn off the “broad search” setting that shows you for general category searches like “electrician near me.” If you don’t do generator work, turning that job type off does the job a negative keyword would do in Search.

How do I know my negative keywords are working?

Three checks, in our view. First, the search terms report: the job-seeker, DIY and utility searches should stop appearing, or appear far less. Second, your calls: if you record and listen to calls from ads, you should hear fewer people asking whether you’re hiring or what their outage number is. Third, cost per booked job, which is the number that matters. Fewer wasted clicks should mean more of the budget lands on searches that book, but only your job records can confirm it.

If calls from ads are still mostly junk after the negatives are in, the problem may be elsewhere: the keywords themselves, the location settings or the ad copy. Tracking which marketing books real jobs covers how to tie calls back to jobs.

What's different about negative keywords for electricians

The trade name is also a job title. Few trades get as many job-seeker searches mixed in with buyer searches. Apprenticeships, trade schools, union halls and licensing exams all use the same words your customers use, so the job-seeker group is usually the biggest one.

“Electric” means the utility to a lot of people. Searches for an outage, a bill or the power company can match broad electrical keywords. Those people need their utility, not an electrician, and they can show up in storm weeks, exactly when real buyers are searching too.

Vehicle and marine electrical is a different trade. Car, truck, RV and boat wiring searches use the same vocabulary. Unless you do that work, block it.

Residential and commercial may need different lists. If you run a commercial campaign, words like tenant improvement or warehouse belong there and may be negatives in your residential service campaign. That split is our suggestion; it only makes sense once you have separate campaigns.

A worked example: what the first negative list can save

These numbers are made up to show the math, not a benchmark. Say your campaign gets 400 clicks a month at an average of $8 a click. You open the search terms report and find that 60 of those clicks came from job seekers, DIY searches and people looking for their utility. At $8 each, that’s $480 a month spent on clicks that couldn’t book a job.

Add those groups as negatives and that $480 stays in the budget for searches like “panel upgrade” and “electrician near me,” where people can actually hire you. The saving only counts if it shows up as more booked jobs for the same spend, which is why the last step is always checking cost per booked job.

Ad spend is paid directly to Google and isn’t part of any package. Our Essentials package, at $3,500 a month, includes Google Ads management for up to $2,500 a month in ad spend; Growth, at $4,500 a month, covers up to $5,000 a month in spend and adds Local Services Ads management.

Frequently asked questions

How many negative keywords should an electrician start with?

There’s no set number. In our view, a starting list that covers the four groups with their plurals and synonyms is usually a few dozen words, and it grows from the search terms report.

Do account-level negatives apply to campaigns I create later?

Google says the account-level list applies automatically to search and shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. A shared negative keyword list only covers the campaigns you apply it to, so add new campaigns to it.

Will negative keywords stop junk calls completely?

No. They stop your ads showing for searches you’ve excluded, but some unwanted clicks and calls will still come through, which is why the search terms report and your call records stay part of the routine.

Do negative keywords lower my cost per click?

Not directly. They change which searches you pay for, not the price of each click. What they can lower is how much you spend on clicks that can’t book.

Can I remove a negative keyword later?

Yes. You can edit or remove negatives at the account, list, campaign or ad group level whenever the data says you blocked something useful.

Should I block towns I don't serve with negative keywords?

Location settings are the main tool for that, but a shared list of out-of-area town names can catch searches like “electrician in [town]” from people inside your area looking elsewhere.

Key takeaways

• Start with job seekers, do-it-yourselfers, parts shoppers and utility, vehicle and other-trade searches.
• Add plurals and synonyms yourself, because negative keywords don’t match close variants.
• Put universal negatives at the account level, shared ones in lists, and one-off ones in the campaign.
• Check the search terms report weekly at first and add what doesn’t fit.
• Don’t block price searches like “panel upgrade cost” until booked-job numbers say to.
• Local Services Ads don’t use keywords; job types and service areas do that work there.

More in this section

• Which keywords should an electrician bid on in Google Ads?
• What Google Ads campaigns work best for electricians?
• Are Google Local Services Ads worth it for electricians?
• How much should an electrician spend on Google Ads each month?
• Which Google Business Profile categories should an electrician choose?

Sources

1. About negative keywords — Google Ads Help
2. About account-level negative keywords — Google Ads Help
3. About negative keyword lists — Google Ads Help
4. Add negative keywords to campaigns — Google Ads Help
5. About the search terms report — Google Ads Help
6. Get negative keyword ideas using the search terms report — Google Ads Help
7. Local Services Ads transition to Performance Max campaigns with pay-per-lead goals — Google Ads Help
8. Edit your industries, service areas, and job types — Google Local Services Help