What should be on a roofing company's Google Ads negative keyword list?<\/h2>\n
A roofer’s negative keyword list should block four kinds of searches: people looking for roofing jobs, people trying to fix a roof themselves, people shopping for roofing materials, and searches for roof work or places you don’t serve. Start with a shared list of the obvious ones, such as jobs, hiring, salary, how to, DIY, supply and wholesale, then add new ones every week from the search terms report, which shows the real searches your ads appeared for. Be careful not to block words homeowners use when they’re ready to hire, such as cost, price, free inspection or storm damage, and remember that negative keywords don’t cover plurals or close variants, so add both job and jobs.<\/p>\n
Every junk click comes out of the same budget as a homeowner’s, so the negative keyword list deserves the same attention as the keywords. We handle that work as part of Google Ads management<\/a> in all of our roofing marketing<\/a> packages. If you’re still deciding whether paid search is worth it at all, our guide on whether Google Ads is worth it for a roofing company<\/a> covers the break-even math, and the roofing marketing questions<\/a> library covers the rest one question at a time.<\/p>\n A negative keyword<\/a> tells Google Ads not to show your ad when a search contains that word or phrase. Google’s own advice is to look for searches that are similar to your keywords but come from people looking for something different.<\/p>\n Roofers need more of them than most local trades because the word roofing covers a lot of ground: jobs, training, materials, tools, car roof racks and do-it-yourself repairs. Google also says broad match is the default<\/a> for every keyword, and that broad match can show your ad on searches related to your keyword, including searches that don’t contain its direct meaning. Without negatives, a broad match roofing keyword can pay for clicks from all of those people. Why roofing ads get clicks but no calls<\/a> covers the other places that money leaks.<\/p>\n In the search terms report<\/a>. Google says it shows the actual terms that a significant number of people searched for that triggered your ad. In Google Ads, open Campaigns, then Insights and reports, then Search terms. Tick the searches you’d never want to pay for and choose Add as negative keyword. You can add them to the ad group, the campaign, or a negative keyword list.<\/p>\n One detail: Google says negatives added from this report go in as negative exact match by default. That blocks only that exact search. For a word like jobs that shows up in many different searches, you’ll usually want to add it again as a broad negative so it blocks every search containing it. More on match types below.<\/p>\n Roofing companies hire, and people look for roofing work on Google using the same words homeowners use. These are the usual words to block, as broad negatives:<\/p>\n One caution. Job on its own can also appear in a homeowner’s search, such as roofers who take small jobs. If you see searches like that in your report, use a phrase negative like roofing jobs or roofer jobs instead of blocking job everywhere.<\/p>\n People who want to patch their own roof will search the same problem a homeowner would hire you to fix. Common blocks:<\/p>\n Use phrase match for how to, not a broad negative on how. A broad negative on how would also block how much does a roof replacement cost, which is exactly the kind of search a homeowner pricing a new roof makes. The difference between those two searches is the whole point of a good negative list.<\/p>\n Contractors and homeowners buying materials search for roofing products by name. If you don’t sell materials, block the words that show someone is shopping for product rather than a crew:<\/p>\n Don’t block shingles or metal on their own. Homeowners search shingle roof replacement and metal roof installation too. Block the shopping words around them instead.<\/p>\n This part is different for every roofer, because it depends on what you don’t do. Think about:<\/p>\n A negative list that’s too aggressive is as costly as one that’s too thin. Google warns that if you use too many negative keywords, your ads might reach fewer customers. In our view, roofers should think twice before blocking:<\/p>\n Negative keywords work differently from regular ones. Google explains three negative match types<\/a>:<\/p>\n The rule that catches roofers out: negative keywords don’t match close variants. Google’s example is that a negative on flowers blocks red flowers but not red flower. So if you block jobs, add job too, and career alongside careers. Google does say negatives account for casing and misspellings, so you don’t need to add those.<\/p>\n A simple rule of thumb: single words that never mean a homeowner, such as salary or wholesale, as broad negatives. Two-word ideas that would cause damage as single words, such as how to or roofing jobs, as phrase negatives.<\/p>\n Google gives you three places:<\/p>\n That routing also helps the ad match the search, one of the things covered in Quality Score for roofing ads<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yes, with a limit. Google says you can add negative keywords to Performance Max<\/a> campaigns, or apply them at the account level, to stop the campaign showing for searches containing those terms. They apply to Search and Shopping inventory only, so they won’t keep a Performance Max ad off YouTube or other websites.<\/p>\n If you run Performance Max for roofing, putting your core job-seeker, do-it-yourself and supply blocks at the account level is the simplest way to cover it along with your Search campaigns.<\/p>\n Google doesn’t set a schedule. Our rule of thumb: check the search terms report every week for the first couple of months of a new campaign, then every couple of weeks once the obvious junk is gone. Check more often after a storm, when more people are searching roofing terms for all sorts of reasons.<\/p>\n Each time, also look at what you’ve already blocked. If calls slow down right after a big batch of new negatives, one of them may be catching homeowners. Give each round of changes time to show up in the numbers before you judge it. How long to run roofing ads before judging them<\/a> covers how much data that takes.<\/p>\n A free visibility audit checks the Google profile, reviews, site and tracking, and shows what to fix first.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The word itself is broad.<\/strong> Few trades share their main word with so many other meanings: a job title, a building material, a car accessory, a school course. That’s why, in our judgement, roofers usually need a longer starting list than most local trades, and why the job-seeker and supply lists matter from day one.<\/p>\n Storms change who is searching.<\/strong> After hail or high winds, roofing searches come from homeowners, but also from out-of-town crews checking the market, people looking for storm work and people researching claims. The search terms report after a storm tends to fill with new junk, and it’s worth an extra look that week.<\/p>\n Insurance words cut both ways.<\/strong> Searches about roof insurance claims can be your best leads or a waste of money, depending on whether you do that work and how the search is worded. Don’t block insurance as a broad word without reading the actual searches first.<\/p>\n These numbers are made up to show the math, not a benchmark for your market. Say your roof repair campaign spent $2,160<\/strong> last month on 120<\/strong> clicks, an average of $18<\/strong> a click. You open the search terms report and sort the searches you’d never want:<\/p>\n That’s 32<\/strong> clicks and $576<\/strong> in a month on people who were never going to hire you, with nothing on a negative list to stop it. Add those four groups to a shared list and next month’s budget stops buying those clicks.<\/p>\n What the money buys instead isn’t guaranteed. It depends on how many homeowners in your area are searching and whether your ad and page earn the call. The cost of the junk, though, is easy to see in your own report.<\/p>\n If you’d rather hand this off, our Essentials package is $3,500 a month and includes Google Ads management up to $2,500 a month in ad spend. Ad spend is paid to Google separately.<\/p>\n There’s no right number. Start with the job-seeker, do-it-yourself and supply words on this page that fit your business, then let the search terms report tell you what else to add.<\/p>\n As a starting point, the job, do-it-yourself and supply words carry over. The services and towns you block depend on your own business, so that part has to be yours.<\/p>\n Not directly. They stop you paying for clicks you don’t want, so the same budget goes to searches that can turn into estimates. What each click costs depends on the auction.<\/p>\n That’s a business choice. If you don’t want your ad showing when someone searches another company by name, add those names as negatives and check the search terms report for others that show up.<\/p>\n Usually a variant. Negative keywords don’t match plurals, singulars or close variants, so blocking jobs doesn’t block job. Google also notes ads can show if the blocked word falls after the 16th word of a very long search.<\/p>\n Yes, the obvious ones. A starting list of job-seeker, do-it-yourself and supply words saves the first weeks of budget. The rest comes from the search terms report once real searches start showing up.<\/p>\n We'll look at how you show up locally and where calls are leaking, then send you a plain-English breakdown.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The negative keywords a roofer should add to Google Ads: job seekers, DIY, supply shoppers and wrong services, plus the homeowner words never to block.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1329,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","ll_review_state":"approved","ll_template_version":"v1","ll_sources":"[\"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2453972?hl=en\", \"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/2453983?hl=en\", \"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/7102466?hl=en\", \"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/11396330?hl=en\", \"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/15726455?hl=en\", \"https:\/\/support.google.com\/google-ads\/answer\/7478529?hl=en\"]","ll_faq":"[{\"q\": \"How many negative keywords should a roofer start with?\", \"a\": \"There's no right number. Start with the job-seeker, do-it-yourself and supply words on this page that fit your business, then let the search terms report tell you what else to add.\"}, {\"q\": \"Can I copy another roofer's negative keyword list?\", \"a\": \"As a starting point, the job, do-it-yourself and supply words carry over. The services and towns you block depend on your own business, so that part has to be yours.\"}, {\"q\": \"Will negative keywords lower my cost per click?\", \"a\": \"Not directly. They stop you paying for clicks you don't want, so the same budget goes to searches that can turn into estimates. What each click costs depends on the auction.\"}, {\"q\": \"Should I block competitor roofers' names?\", \"a\": \"That's a business choice. If you don't want your ad showing when someone searches another company by name, add those names as negatives and check the search terms report for others that show up.\"}, {\"q\": \"Why is my ad still showing for a word I blocked?\", \"a\": \"Usually a variant. Negative keywords don't match plurals, singulars or close variants, so blocking jobs doesn't block job. Google also notes ads can show if the blocked word falls after the 16th word of a very long search.\"}, {\"q\": \"Should I add negative keywords before a campaign launches?\", \"a\": \"Yes, the obvious ones. A starting list of job-seeker, do-it-yourself and supply words saves the first weeks of budget. The rest comes from the search terms report once real searches start showing up.\"}]","ll_cluster_id":"roofing-0141","ll_hub":"roofing","ll_lang":"en","ll_last_regenerated":"2026-10-25","tldr":"What does a negative keyword do, and why do roofers need so many?<\/h2>\n
Step 1: Where do I find the searches to block?<\/h2>\n
Step 2: Which job-seeker searches should a roofer block?<\/h2>\n
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Step 3: Which do-it-yourself searches should a roofer block?<\/h2>\n
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Step 4: Which supply and material searches should a roofer block?<\/h2>\n
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Step 5: Which services and places should a roofer block?<\/h2>\n
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Which searches should a roofer never block?<\/h2>\n
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Which match type should each negative keyword use?<\/h2>\n
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![\"Roofing](\"https:\/\/www.limitless-local.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/roofing-owner-crossing-off-list-at-truck-tailgate.webp\")
<\/figure>\nWhere should the list live: account, shared list or campaign?<\/h2>\n
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Do negative keywords work in Performance Max campaigns?<\/h2>\n
How often should I update a roofing negative keyword list?<\/h2>\n
Not sure which of these is costing you jobs?<\/h4>\n
What's different about negative keywords for roofers<\/h2>\n
A worked example: what a month of junk roofing clicks cost<\/h2>\n
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![\"Bar](\"https:\/\/www.limitless-local.com\/resources\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/negative-keywords-roofer-add-google-ads-junk-roofing-clicks-bars.webp\")
<\/figure>\nFrequently asked questions<\/h2>\n
How many negative keywords should a roofer start with?<\/h3>\n
Can I copy another roofer's negative keyword list?<\/h3>\n
Will negative keywords lower my cost per click?<\/h3>\n
Should I block competitor roofers' names?<\/h3>\n
Why is my ad still showing for a word I blocked?<\/h3>\n
Should I add negative keywords before a campaign launches?<\/h3>\n
Key takeaways<\/h2>\n
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Want a second set of eyes on your setup?<\/h4>\n
More in this section<\/h2>\n
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Sources<\/h2>\n
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