Tropical_Island - 10:40 am on Jun 1, 2003 (gmt 0)

I'm not completely sure what "webdiversity" meant by his last statement:

"Searchers are getting more and more lazy. We're finding more and more of the transactions we want to see are taking place higher up the food chain than when you had to be really specific to find what you were looking for. What we find is the more negative keywords you use (instead of exact match), the more you potentially hamper the likely success of the buyers picking you as opposed to the competition."

How could well chosen negative key words hamper your success when in fact you are weeding out the not so lazy searchers who actually type in the word you don't want to reach?

If they just type in the short version of the search you will appear however if they type in a longer phrase that includes a word you don't want then you won't appear. This should increase ROI not hurt it.

To "colinf".

One of the best sources we have found is the Overture "search suggestion tool". By putting in your main search term you can see many different combinations theat include your term. If some don't apply to your particular business then you can include them in your negative word list. Don't depend on AdWords search term tool. While better than it used to be it still is not equal to Over's.