If you run Google Ads for apartment communities (or really any business), lack of attention to negative keyword management is the number one thing that is most likely to quietly wreck your performance.
I’ll start with the basics and define what negative keywords are, tell you why they are so important, and explain why an AI-forward company like ours still does this function manually.
What are negative keywords?
Negative keywords are terms you tell Google not to show your ads for. If someone searches for something that includes one of your negative keywords, your ad won’t appear.
Simple example: if you add “jobs” as a negative keyword, your ad won’t show for “apartment leasing jobs near me.” That’s good because those searches aren’t looking to rent your apartments.
It’s a pretty straightforward concept. Now let’s talk about how Google actually matches your ads to searches.
Keywords vs. search terms (and where things go sideways)
When you look at your Google Ads account, your keyword list might look great with highly relevant keywords sorted into separate AdGroups appropriately.
Here’s the catch: those keywords are not what people are actually typing into Google.
Google uses those keywords to match real user searches. You can see what people are actually searching for in the search terms report.
Suppose your keyword is something like:
- “apartments in Old City Philadelphia”
As weird as it sounds, this keyword could actually trigger your ads when people search for:
- “apartments with no credit check”
- “Philadelphia apartment that accepts evictions”
- “apartment jobs near me”
…and searches for your competitors. If your campaigns aren’t performing and your keyword report looks like a well-organized masterpiece, it’s possible your search terms report is a mess.
That chaos means your budget is getting wasted.
Why negative keyword management matters a lot
If you’re not actively managing negatives, especially for Performance Max campaigns, Google will keep stretching when your ads show. The system is designed to find conversions, and it will keep trying to find searches that convert. Sometimes you can start getting conversions from keywords that are used by people who won’t ever rent, e.g., the “apartments that accept evictions,” which will provide positive reinforcement for this keyword and make the mess even bigger.
What happens over time:
- You start paying more for irrelevant clicks
- Conversion rates from lead to lease collapse
- Cost per lease creeps up
Sometimes, negative keyword management is tricky. We recently saw the search term “modern apartments” appear across most of our clients’ accounts. On the surface, it sounds relevant. But to our trained eye, the conversion behavior didn’t make sense (e.g., 3 conversions from 1 very high cost click in many accounts). We added this as a negative keyword to our keyword list.
That’s the kind of thing that slips through if you’re not paying attention, and if you are managing Google Ads in-house, you might feel pressure to let it slide. We had more than one debate with our clients about this decision, which was an extremely obvious problem to us.
Why we still manage this manually
We’ve tried to automate negative keyword management a couple of times. Some day we will figure out how to do this, but the reality is we haven’t found a system that consistently does this as well as one of our team members.
The challenge is nuance.
A tool can flag keywords with:
- high spend + no conversions
- weird patterns
- competitor names
But it doesn’t always understand intent well.
It doesn’t always know which ones are problematic, but they look good on the surface.
So for now, we still review search terms manually and build shared negative keyword lists based on real patterns we see across all of our accounts.
It’s not flashy, and it’s boring work, but it helps us get better results. Even with a lot of effort, it’s a constant battle of whack-a-mole.
Let us look at your search term report and change history log
If you’re only looking at your keyword report, you’re missing half the story.
Real performance insights in your search terms. Your success depends on consistently and intelligently filtering out what doesn’t belong. Your search terms report will never look perfect, but if you see active negative keyword management in your change history log, you know that your Google Ads management partner is making its best effort.
If you’re not sure whether your Google Ads campaigns are working as well as they should, or if you just want a second set of eyes, we can help you look at your search term report and change history log, and let you know if you might be leaving performance on the table.
From the desk of Ellen Thompson, Co-founder and CEO of Respage >> Since its founding, Respage has helped over 10,000 communities attract, engage, and retain residents. Its platform assists properties in generating leads, automating leasing, and managing reputation and social media. Thompson is also the Founder of Results Repeat, a digital marketing agency that has helped hundreds of companies create a digital presence and use SEO and paid marketing to generate more business online.
