Now that you understand the types of negative keywords, let’s walk through the exact workflow of building your list.

Step 1: Start With Seed Negatives Before You Launch a Campaign

A common mistake advertisers make is launching campaigns with zero negative keywords. This leads to an expensive clean-up process later.

Instead, every campaign should begin with:

Base Negative Keywords to Include Immediately

• “free”

• “cheap”

• “jobs”

• “tutorial”

• “definition”

• “meaning”

• “example”

• “sample”

This filters out 30–40% of low-intent queries even before traffic starts coming in.

Industry-Specific Negatives

Every niche has predictable junk searches.

If you run a PPC agency, you might exclude:

• “ppc course”

• “ppc jobs”

• “ppc salary”

• “how to do ppc”

If you run an e-commerce store selling high-end appliances:

• “DIY”

• “manual”

• “repair”

• “used”

• “refurbished”

Start with these to instantly tighten audience reach.

Step 2: Analyze Bing’s Search Term Report (Your Strongest Source of Negatives)

Once your campaign gets traffic, the Bing Ads Search Terms Report becomes your most important optimization tool.

This report shows:

• Exact queries users typed

• Cost per query

• Clicks

• Conversions

• Irrelevant keywords wasting money

What to look for in the report:

1. Repeated Irrelevant Patterns

These should become global negative keyword rules.
Example: many searches containing “job,” “salary,” “internship.”

2. Low-Intent Modifiers

Words like “free,” “cheap,” “sample,” “define,” “wiki,” etc.

3. Multi-word Junk Phrases

Example:
“how to start a ppc agency tutorial”
“best ppc jobs salary”
“free bing ads training course”

4. Keyword Themes That Hurt Your Quality Score

If a term gets clicks but no conversions after 100+ clicks, consider excluding it.

Pro Tip:

Create a weekly negative keyword review routine.
Most wasted ad spend comes from not reviewing search terms frequently enough.

Step 3: Use Bing Keyword Planner to Discover Hidden Negative Terms

Although Keyword Planner is usually used to find target keywords, it’s also a goldmine for negative keyword opportunities.

How to extract negatives:

1. Enter your main keyword

2. Export all keyword suggestions

3. Highlight irrelevant themes

4. Add irrelevant or contradictory terms as negatives

Example:
If your target is “Bing Ads management,” Keyword Planner may show:

• “bing ads jobs”

• “bing ads certification”

• “bing ads course”
  → all perfect negatives.

Step 4: Build a Universal (Account-Level) Negative Keyword List

To maintain consistency across campaigns, Bing Ads allows you to create shared negative keyword lists.

What to include in the universal list:

1. Global Low-Intent Negatives

• “free”

• “cheap”

• “meaning”

• “definition”

• “salary”

• “jobs”

• “tutorial”

2. Your Business-Specific Irrelevant Themes

If you sell services, exclude “template,” “PDF,” “download.”
If you sell products, exclude “DIY,” “manual,” “repair.”

3. Seasonal Irrelevant Themes

If you don’t offer Black Friday or holiday deals, exclude:

• “black friday”

• “sale”

• “discount”

Once built, apply the list to every campaign. This saves hours of repetitive optimization.

Step 5: Use Third-Party Tools to Expand Your Negative Keyword List

Several tools can help discover irrelevant search patterns outside Bing’s platform.

Highly recommended tools include:

• Ahrefs Keyword Explorer
  Use filters like “Include: free, cheap, DIY” to find negative modifiers.

• SEMrush Keyword Magic Tool
  Find question-based or research-intent terms to exclude.

• AnswerThePublic
  Excellent for discovering “how-to” or question keywords.

• Google Keyword Planner
  Still extremely useful for broad keyword datasets.

Goal:

Identify patterns Bing may not reveal right away.

Step 6: Categorize Your Negative Keywords Into Themed Lists

Professional PPC managers never keep a random, messy negative keyword document.
Instead, they segment negatives based on themes.

Organize your negative keyword lists like this:

• Intent blockers (free, cheap, how to, examples)

• Career seekers (jobs, salary, resume)

• Competitors

• Research / educational searches

• Product or service mismatch

• Misleading close variants

This categorization makes scaling your account much easier.

Step 7: Optimize Negative Keywords by Match Type

Bing Ads gives you two options for negative match types: Negative Phrase and Negative Exact. While this seems simple, using the wrong match type can either block too much traffic or not block enough.

Negative Phrase Match

This blocks searches containing your exact phrase in any order, even if extra words exist around it.

Example negative phrase:
“free trial”

Blocked queries include:

• “ppc management free trial”

• “is there any free trial for bing ads”

• “best free trial ppc tools”

Use this when:

• You want broad blocking

• You want to eliminate entire themes

• The phrase is clearly irrelevant 100% of the time

Avoid phrase match if the term might have some relevance in certain contexts.

Negative Exact Match

This only blocks the specific query, nothing more.

Example negative exact:
[bing ads tutorial]

Blocked:

• Only “bing ads tutorial”

Allowed:

• “best bing ads tutorial online”

• “free tutorial for bing ads”

Use this when:

• You only want to block extremely specific bad performers

• You don’t want to accidentally remove useful long-tail keywords

Pro Tip:
Most advertisers rely heavily on phrase match, but expert PPC managers frequently use negative exact to fine-tune campaigns without hurting high-intent keywords.

Step 8: Continuously Review Performance to Identify New Negative Keywords

Negative keyword optimization is not a one-time setup. Search behavior changes, new trends appear, and Bing’s AI-driven query expansion can cause your ads to show on terms you didn’t expect.

How often should you review your search terms?

To maintain optimal performance, follow this schedule:

• Daily review when campaigns are new

• Weekly review once stable

• Monthly cleanup for mature campaigns

What to look for in each review cycle:

1. Irrelevant themes emerging over time

Example:
Many advertisers suddenly see “AI” or “ChatGPT” related variants appearing in their search terms—adding negatives quickly prevents hundreds of wasted clicks.

2. Budget-draining search terms

Any term that:

• Spends 20%+ of a keyword’s cost without conversions

• Has a CTR far below ad group average

• Generates high impressions but low engagement

→ should likely be excluded or refined.

3. Low-quality lead patterns

Sometimes a keyword does bring leads, but the leads are poor quality. In that case, add negatives that reflect those unwanted user types.

4. Expensive, irrelevant close variants

Bing’s broad match tends to trigger unpredictable variants—block them as soon as they appear.

The rule is simple:
The more proactive your negative keyword monitoring, the lower your CPC and the higher your ROAS.

Step 9: Build Negative Keyword Lists for Each Funnel Stage

Your campaigns should not all share the same negative keywords. Different funnel stages require different filters.

Top-of-Funnel (TOF)

Here, you want to educate or attract broad interest, so you should keep fewer negatives.
Avoid removing too many “how to” or “what is” keywords if they’re part of your awareness strategy.

Middle-of-Funnel (MOF)

At this stage, you are nurturing interest. Add negatives that block:

• Job seekers

• Students

• Free/DIY searchers

• Competitors (if not targeted intentionally)

Bottom-of-Funnel (BOF)

This is where users are ready to buy. So you want the strictest negative filtering. Add negatives such as:

• Tutorial

• Examples

• Research-related terms

• Cheap/free/inexpensive modifiers

The deeper the funnel, the more refined your negative keyword list should be.

Step 10: Track Conversions and Add Negatives Based on Lead Quality (Not Just Search Terms)

One of the biggest mistakes advertisers make is relying only on the search term report to decide negatives.

This creates a blind spot because not all conversions are equal.

For example:

You might get 10 conversions from a keyword, but after reviewing CRM data, you discover:

• 7 are unqualified

• 2 are competitors

• 1 is a spam lead

This means the keyword is attracting the wrong audience—so you need negative keywords that filter out:

• Wrong industries

• Wrong job titles

• Wrong locations

• Wrong budgets

• Competitors

• Freebie seekers

This is advanced optimization most advertisers skip—yet it is one of the strongest ways to improve real ROI.

Step 11: Use Negative Keywords to Improve Smart Bidding Performance

If you’re using automated bidding strategies like:

• Maximize Conversions

• Target CPA

• Target ROAS

Then negative keywords become even more important, because Bing’s AI learns from your traffic patterns.

Bad traffic = bad algorithmic learning.

Your goal is to feed Bing’s AI with:

• High-intent queries

• Clean search patterns

• Consistent lead quality

• Predictable user intent

Negative keywords help ensure the machine learning model receives only valuable signals.

This speeds up learning time and reduces wasted spend during the “learning phase” of smart bidding.

Step 12: Build a Long-Term Negative Keyword System That Scales

Professional PPC managers don’t just build negative keyword lists; they build negative keyword systems.

Here’s how your system should work:

1. Maintain a Master Negative Keyword List

Updated weekly and applied to all campaigns.

2. Maintain Campaign-Specific Negative Lists

Each campaign needs its own custom list.

For example:

• Brand campaign negatives

• Non-brand search negatives

• Broad match negatives

• Competitor campaign negatives

3. Maintain Ad Group–Specific Negatives

These block internal cannibalization between ad groups.
(Example: Brand group blocking non-brand terms)

4. Update with automation

Use rules or scripts to flag:

• high-cost zero-conversion queries

• low CTR outliers

• new irrelevant themes

5. Document everything

Every blocked keyword should be categorized and tracked in a shared spreadsheet.

This system creates a predictable, scalable structure that ensures performance remains stable even as spend increases.