Clarification on Lists Displayed under “Negative Keywords” and Their Difference from Negative Keyword Exclusion Lists

[Hardeep Singh]

Hello Google Ads Support Team,

I hope you’re doing well.

I would like to understand how to programmatically retrieve the lists displayed under the “Negative Keywords” tab in Google Ads (as shown in the attached screenshot).

From my understanding, these appear to be Negative Keyword Exclusion Lists that are created using the Shared Set feature. However, I would like to confirm the following details:

1. What GAQL query or API endpoint should be used to fetch only the lists that appear under the “Negative Keywords” view?

2. How are these lists technically different from the Negative Keyword Exclusion Lists shown under Tools → Shared Library → Negative Keyword Lists?

3. Is there a specific field, key, or attribute in the API (or resource type) that differentiates these lists from standard shared sets or campaign-level negative keywords?

Thank you for your help in clarifying this distinction and guiding me to the appropriate query or resource reference.

Best regards,

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Thank you for reaching out to the Google Ads API support team.

Upon checking your UI screenshot, I can see that you want to retrieve the Negative Keyword list from the Shared Library. You may use the shared_criterion report. This report lists the criterion belonging to a shared set. You may refer below to an example query.
 

SELECT 
  shared_criterion.criterion_id, 
  shared_criterion.keyword.match_type, 
  shared_criterion.keyword.text, 
  shared_criterion.resource_name, 
  shared_criterion.shared_set, 
  shared_criterion.type 
FROM shared_criterion  

This query retrieves all Negative Keyword Shared Sets currently linked to any of your campaigns, along with the campaigns they are linked to:

SELECT campaign.id, shared_set.id, campaign.name, shared_set.resource_name, shared_set.name, shared_set.type FROM campaign_shared_set WHERE shared_set.type = 'NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS' 

There is no technical difference between the list shown in the "Negative Keywords" tab of a campaign and the one shown under "Tools → Shared Library → Negative Keyword Lists."

They are both the exact same resource in the Google Ads API: a SharedSet with the type set to NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS.

Shared Library View: Shows all SharedSet resources of type NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS that exist at the account level, regardless of whether they are currently applied to a campaign.

Campaign Negative Keywords Tab View: Shows the subset of those SharedSet resources that are linked to the specific campaign you are viewing, which is managed via the campaign_shared_set resource.

By filtering your API queries using the WHERE shared_set.type = 'NEGATIVE_KEYWORDS', you ensure you are retrieving only the data associated with the lists that appear under the "Negative Keywords" tab.
 

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team

Feedback
How was our support today?

               
[2025-10-14 21:34:15Z GMT] This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!500Ht01vQlis:ref" (ADR-00335507)