Negative keywords + positive keywords – which will prevail?

[MS]

If I have the following combination of negative/positive keywords, which of these will trigger and ad to be displayed:

| Negative Keyword | Positive Keyword | Search Term |

| a b              | c                | a b c       |

| a b              | b c              | a b c       |

| a b              | a b c            | a b c       |

Thanks for enlightening me!

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

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

Negative keywords won’t match to close variants or other expansions. For example, if you exclude the negative broad match keyword 'flowers', ads won’t be eligible to serve when a user searches 'red flowers', but can serve if a user searches for 'red flower'. So, it also depends on the match types of the negative keywords used. I recommend you refer to this Help Center article about negative keywords for more information on how negative keywords work and when they might be useful. This article has examples of when the ads could show based on the search term and the negative keyword used. If you still need assistance, please provide us with your Google Ads customer ID so we can route you to the appropriate support team. Your concern is related to the Google Ads product rather than specific to the Google Ads API. Hence, this is out of scope for us.
 

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team

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[2025-07-08 06:40:33Z GMT] This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!500Ht01rhP4Z:ref" (ADR-00317817)

[MS]

This is a generic question. No need for personal assistance.

Let me refine my question:

Each keyword entry is a "broad match" (hence, no brackets and no quotes in the above table).

Provided all entries are "broad match" entries – what will happen when above search terms are entered?

[Google Ads API Forum Advisor]

Hi,

Note that broad match triggers your ad if the search term contains any or similar meaning to your keyword. And the negative broad match blocks the ad if the search contains all your negative keyword terms, even if the terms are in a different order.Your ad may still show if the search contains only some of your keyword terms.  Based on this, I can confirm your ad will not show for any of the search terms you provided previously. 

If you need more information regarding positive and negative keywords, provide us with your Google Ads customer ID so we can route you to the appropriate support team.

You can send the details via Reply privately to the author option, or direct private reply to this email.

Thanks,
 

Google Ads API Team

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[2025-07-08 12:44:24Z GMT] This message is in relation to case "ref:!00D1U01174p.!500Ht01rhP4Z:ref" (ADR-00317817)

[MS]

Thank you for this valuable information!

I appreciated it! 👍