Negative keywords question

[dane120]

We are a company selling blue widgets, we only sell blue widgets. We do not sell widgets in any other colour. Therefore I have set up my adwords account using the following keywords:

blue widgets
[blue widgets]
"blue widgets"

I don't want my advert to be triggered for any other colour widgets so I am going to use negative keywords. First of all I don't want to my advert to be triggered for 'red widgets' so do I use:

a) -red

or

b) -red widgets

?

[RhinoFish]

some good stuff for you here:
[webmasterworld.com...]

if you do no red at all, just add -red and it'll kill anything with "red" in it.

[barrymossel]

yep, use -red. otherwise you will have to add things like -red widget and -buy red stuff etc...

[dane120]

When I have been adding negative keyword such as:

-red

my advert appears to be triggered for the keyword 'red widgets' I can only seem to stop the advert from being triggered when I add:

-red widgets

?

[RhinoFish]

wondering what you mean by "appears"... logs, typing something into google.com...

use the ad diagnostic tool within adwords and type in things like red widgets and see what it says.

[dane120]

That's right when I type the keyword 'red widgets' into Google when using the negative keyword -red my advert will be displayed.

It appears that I can only prevent my advert from displaying on Google when I use the negative keyword -red widgets.

In doing this I still find my advert will display for the keyword 'blue widgets'?

[RhinoFish]

that's not the case with everything i've tried and tested.

is it possible that you have multiple campaigns or ad groups and you're triggering something from a spot where you have yet to add the -red negative keyword?

are you adding the neg keyword in ad group or at the campaign level (both are possible)?

use the diagnostic tool and you'll be able to see the information about what's getting triggered where...