A negative blocks a term so your ads stop showing for it. This is where most wasted spend gets recovered.
A term is suggested as a negative when:
Relevance is at or below 20% - it clearly doesn't match your keywords.
Wasted spend is at or above 2.0x target cost per sale.
Conversions are 0 (or, on ROAS campaigns, it returned no conversion value at all).
Auto-applied negatives are exact by default, so a negative can't accidentally carry a core money-word and over-block. Phrase is available when you choose it; broad is never used automatically. You also choose whether each negative applies at ad-group or campaign level.
Campaign level: stronger; blocks the term everywhere. Best for terms that are clearly unwanted across the whole campaign.
Ad-group level: safer when a term is wrong here but could be useful in another ad group.
How to apply:
Open the Negatives queue.
For each term, confirm the match type and the level (ad-group or campaign).
Select rows and Apply - bulk for the obvious junk, individually for borderline calls.
RELATED ARTICLES
How review works
The queues, the columns, and what to check before applying.
Connected shared negative lists
What's already blocked in Google Ads, shown for context.
Safety & guardrails
How Search Terms protects good traffic from automation.
