If you’re using Google Ads to generate motivated seller leads, choosing the right keywords is only half the job. You also need to tell Google which searches you don’t want to pay for.
That’s where negative keywords come in.
Negative keywords help real estate investors prevent their ads from appearing for searches that don’t match the type of seller leads they’re trying to generate. Common examples include searches related to real estate jobs, licensing, classes, rentals, and home-buying rather than home-selling.
Get your negative keyword strategy right, and you can cut out a lot of irrelevant traffic.
Get too aggressive with it, though, and you can accidentally block searches from homeowners you actually want to reach.
That’s why we don’t recommend grabbing a massive negative keyword list from the internet and dropping the whole thing into your account.
A better approach is to start with obvious mismatches, monitor the searches that are actually triggering your ads, and build your negative keyword list around real data.
Below are 25 keywords and categories worth considering for a real estate investor Google Ads campaign.
They’re just the beginning. Since 2015, we’ve built and refined campaigns using thousands of negative keywords based on real search-term data, continually adding new exclusions as irrelevant searches emerge.
What Are Negative Keywords in Google Ads?
Negative keywords are terms you can add to Google Ads to stop your ads from appearing for certain searches.
Think of your keyword strategy as having two sides.
Your regular keywords help Google understand the searches you want to target.
Your negative keywords help Google understand the searches you want to avoid.
For example, a cash home buyer might want to appear for searches such as:
- sell my house fast
- cash home buyers near me
- sell house as is
- need to sell my house quickly
But you probably don’t want that same campaign spending money on someone searching for:
- real estate jobs near me
- apartments for rent
- how to become a realtor
- real estate classes
- houses for sale near me
They’re all real estate searches, but the intent is completely different.
That’s an important distinction in Google Ads.
You aren’t trying to attract everyone interested in real estate. You’re trying to reach homeowners whose searches suggest they may be interested in selling a property.
If you’re still building the positive side of your campaign, our guide to PPC keywords for real estate investors is a good place to start.
Why Negative Keywords Matter for Motivated Seller PPC
Real estate investor keywords can be expensive, particularly in competitive markets. Paying for irrelevant clicks makes it harder to turn your advertising budget into qualified seller opportunities.
Imagine that your ad appears when somebody searches:
“real estate agent jobs in Phoenix”
They click.
You pay for the visit.
They land on a page offering to buy their house.
There’s an obvious mismatch.
Now imagine that happening across dozens or hundreds of loosely related searches over time.
That’s the problem a good negative keyword strategy is designed to address.
Negative keywords can help you filter out searches from people looking for jobs, courses, rentals, loans, licensing information, or other things your campaign isn’t offering.
But there’s another side to this.
You don’t want to filter so aggressively that you remove genuine seller intent.
A homeowner searching about a mortgage problem, foreclosure, inherited house, tenant issue, or damaged property might use words that look undesirable when viewed in isolation.
Context matters.
That’s why we treat negative keyword management as an ongoing PPC optimization process rather than a one-time checklist.
25 Negative Keywords Real Estate Investors Should Consider
Here’s a starting list.
These aren’t 25 terms that every real estate investor should immediately add to every campaign. Think of them as 25 terms and categories to investigate.
| # | Keyword or category | Likely search intent | Our take |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | jobs | Employment | Usually exclude |
| 2 | careers | Employment | Usually exclude |
| 3 | salary | Employment research | Usually exclude |
| 4 | internship | Employment | Usually exclude |
| 5 | classes | Education | Usually exclude |
| 6 | course | Education | Usually exclude |
| 7 | training | Education | Usually exclude |
| 8 | school | Education | Usually exclude |
| 9 | certification | Education | Usually exclude |
| 10 | license | Licensing | Review carefully |
| 11 | apartment for rent | Rental | Usually exclude |
| 12 | house for rent | Rental | Usually exclude |
| 13 | rental listings | Rental | Usually exclude |
| 14 | tenant application | Rental | Usually exclude |
| 15 | apartments | Rental/property | Review carefully |
| 16 | home loan | Financing | Usually exclude |
| 17 | mortgage rates | Financing | Usually exclude |
| 18 | mortgage | Financing/distress | Review carefully |
| 19 | realtor jobs | Employment | Usually exclude |
| 20 | real estate agent jobs | Employment | Usually exclude |
| 21 | become a realtor | Career/education | Usually exclude |
| 22 | realtor license | Licensing | Usually exclude |
| 23 | real estate exam | Education | Usually exclude |
| 24 | MLS access | Industry/professional | Usually exclude |
| 25 | real estate course | Education | Usually exclude |
Let’s break these down by intent because that’s more useful than looking at them as 25 unrelated words.
Employment Negative Keywords
1. Jobs
“Jobs” is one of the first terms we’d investigate if it started appearing regularly in a motivated seller campaign.
Someone searching for “real estate jobs,” “real estate investment jobs,” or “home buying company jobs” isn’t showing seller intent. They’re looking for work.
That’s not the audience the campaign was built to reach.
2. Careers
The same applies to “careers.”
A search involving a real estate career can contain plenty of words that sound relevant to Google while having nothing to do with selling a property.
If career searches are triggering ads, they’re generally worth excluding.
3. Salary
Salary searches usually tell you the person is researching a profession.
“Real estate investor salary,” “realtor salary,” and similar searches may look real-estate relevant on the surface, but they’re unlikely to produce motivated seller leads.
4. Internship
This one is fairly straightforward.
People searching for internships are looking for employment or career experience. Unless recruitment is somehow an objective of the campaign, internship traffic probably doesn’t belong in a seller acquisition campaign.
Education Negative Keywords
Education is another category that can quietly creep into real estate PPC traffic.
5. Classes
Someone searching for real estate classes is usually trying to learn about the industry, obtain a license, or develop a skill.
That’s very different from someone trying to sell a house.
6. Course
The same goes for searches involving “course.”
A person searching for a wholesaling course or real estate investing course may eventually become an investor themselves. That doesn’t make them a motivated seller today.
7. Training
Real estate training searches tend to have educational or professional intent.
If your landing page is designed to tell homeowners, “We buy houses,” that isn’t what these searchers are looking for.
8. School
Searches for real estate schools, licensing schools, and training providers are generally easy to separate from seller intent.
If they’re appearing in your Search Terms report, they’re worth reviewing.
9. Certification
Certification is another professional-development term.
It might appear alongside highly relevant real estate language, which is exactly why looking only at individual words can be misleading. Read the complete search query before deciding what to block.
10. License
“License” requires a little more judgment.
Something like “how to get a real estate license” is clearly not a motivated seller search.
But rather than automatically blocking a broad single-word term everywhere, we’d look at the searches that caused the problem and choose the negative match type accordingly.
Sometimes the better negative is a phrase such as “real estate license” rather than the word “license” by itself.
Rental Negative Keywords
Rental searches can create another obvious mismatch.
A homeowner looking to sell and a renter looking for somewhere to live can use many of the same location and property words.
The intent behind them, however, couldn’t be more different.
11. Apartment for Rent
If someone searches “apartment for rent near me,” they’re looking for housing.
They’re not looking for someone to purchase their property.
For a motivated seller campaign, this is generally a strong exclusion candidate.
12. House for Rent
This can be especially deceptive because the query contains “house” and may contain a target city.
That doesn’t make it relevant.
The phrase “for rent” completely changes the searcher’s intent.
13. Rental Listings
Someone browsing rental listings is typically looking for available housing or researching the rental market.
Neither is automatically relevant to a campaign designed to acquire properties directly from homeowners.
14. Tenant Application
Tenant-application searches generally come from people trying to rent.
If these are appearing in your motivated seller campaigns, there’s usually little reason to keep paying for them.
15. Apartments
Be careful with this one.
If you only buy single-family homes, apartment-related searches may not matter to you.
But if your acquisition strategy includes multifamily properties, excluding “apartments” across the entire account could be a mistake.
This is a good example of why your negative keyword list needs to match your actual acquisition criteria.
Financing Negative Keywords
Financing terms deserve more attention because this is where an overly aggressive negative list can start hurting you.
16. Home Loan
Someone looking for a home loan is usually trying to finance a purchase rather than sell a property.
If you’re seeing searches such as “best home loan rates” or “how to qualify for a home loan,” they probably don’t belong in a seller campaign.
17. Mortgage Rates
Mortgage-rate searches usually have financing intent.
A person comparing today’s mortgage rates is probably not looking for a cash buyer.
This can make phrases involving mortgage rates useful negative candidates when they’re showing up in your account.
18. Mortgage
This is where we’d slow down.
Should “mortgage” automatically be a negative keyword for every real estate investor?
No.
A homeowner searching for mortgage rates is one thing.
A homeowner searching because they’re struggling with mortgage payments could be something entirely different.
The second person may eventually consider selling.
Blocking “mortgage” too broadly could therefore eliminate searches connected with legitimate seller situations.
Look at the complete query.
The objective isn’t to remove words you don’t like. It’s to remove intent that doesn’t fit your campaign.
Realtor and Real Estate Agent Negative Keywords
This category also needs some nuance.
Someone looking for a real estate agent job isn’t relevant.
A homeowner comparing selling to an investor versus listing with an agent may be much more interesting.
That’s why we prefer specific exclusions over blindly adding “realtor” as a negative across an entire account.
19. Realtor Jobs
This is a strong candidate.
Someone searching for realtor jobs is looking for employment, not a home buyer.
20. Real Estate Agent Jobs
Same problem, slightly different query.
If these searches are generating clicks, there’s usually no reason for a motivated seller campaign to keep paying for them.
21. Become a Realtor
This is career intent.
The person wants information about entering the profession rather than selling a property.
22. Realtor License
Licensing intent is also usually unrelated to seller acquisition.
Again, you may decide to exclude the complete phrase rather than every search containing “realtor.”
23. Real Estate Exam
Someone preparing for a real estate exam is studying for a professional qualification.
They’re not the target audience for a “sell your house for cash” campaign.
24. MLS Access
People searching for MLS access are more likely to be agents, investors, buyers, or real estate professionals.
That’s usually not the homeowner audience a motivated seller campaign is trying to attract.
25. Real Estate Course
Finally, real estate course searches usually indicate educational intent.
If you’re selling courses, that’s great traffic.
If you’re buying houses, it probably isn’t.
So, Which Negative Keywords Should You Actually Add?
Here’s the rule we’d use:
Add a negative keyword when you have a good reason to believe the search intent behind it doesn’t match the type of lead your campaign is designed to generate.
Don’t add something simply because it appeared on somebody else’s negative keyword list.
Before excluding a term, ask:
- What is this person actually trying to accomplish?
- Could this search realistically come from a homeowner who wants to sell?
- Does our landing page solve the problem behind the search?
- Has this type of search produced qualified leads before?
- How much have we spent on this search pattern?
- Would a phrase or exact negative be safer than excluding the individual word?
Those questions matter far more than having the longest possible negative keyword list.
Negative Broad vs. Phrase vs. Exact Match
Once you’ve found an irrelevant search, you still need to decide how to exclude it.
Google Ads offers negative broad, negative phrase, and negative exact match for Search campaigns.
Negative Broad Match
Negative broad match provides a relatively broad exclusion.
If all the words in your negative keyword appear in the search, the ad generally won’t show, even if the words appear in a different order.
That can be useful when the underlying concept is clearly irrelevant.
It can also block more traffic than you intended if you aren’t careful.
Negative Phrase Match
Negative phrase match prevents the ad from appearing when the search contains your negative keyword phrase in the same order.
This gives you more control.
For example, you might decide a particular two- or three-word phrase is consistently irrelevant without wanting to exclude every search containing one of those individual words.
Negative Exact Match
Negative exact match is narrower.
It prevents your ad from showing when the search matches the negative phrase without additional words.
This can be useful when one particular query is wasting money but broader searches around the same subject might still be valuable.
Google explains the differences in its official negative keyword documentation.
One technical point is especially worth remembering: negative keywords don’t behave exactly like positive keywords when it comes to close variants.
So don’t assume that adding one negative automatically handles every possible variation of it.
How to Find Negative Keywords in Your Own Google Ads Account
A generic list can give you ideas.
Your own search data is better.
The Search Terms report shows the searches people used that resulted in your ads being shown. That’s where you can start finding mismatches between what you’re targeting and what people are actually searching.
Google explains how the report works in its Search Terms documentation.
When reviewing the report, don’t just scan for obviously ridiculous searches.
Look for patterns.
Maybe you notice repeated searches around:
- jobs;
- licensing;
- courses;
- rentals;
- loans;
- property listings; or
- unrelated cities.
One irrelevant search might be noise.
Twenty searches with the same underlying intent are telling you something about the way the campaign is matching.
That’s when negative keywords become more powerful.
Instead of playing whack-a-mole with individual searches, you can identify the broader type of traffic that doesn’t belong in the campaign and decide how best to exclude it.
Google also provides guidance on using search terms to find negative keyword ideas.
Don’t Judge a Search Term Only by Whether It Got a Click
This deserves more attention than it usually gets.
Suppose one search term costs $80 and doesn’t produce a lead.
Is it a bad search term?
Maybe.
But one click isn’t necessarily enough information to make that decision.
Now suppose another category has generated 40 clicks, several form submissions, and no leads your acquisitions team would consider qualified.
That tells a much more interesting story.
Whenever possible, connect Google Ads performance with what happens after someone becomes a lead.
For a real estate investor, a form submission isn’t the end goal.
You ultimately care about seller opportunities and acquisitions.
That means your negative keyword decisions can become more sophisticated as your tracking improves.
How Often Should You Review Negative Keywords?
There’s no magic schedule that works for every real estate investor.
An account spending heavily in several competitive markets may need much more attention than a smaller, mature campaign with relatively stable traffic.
New campaigns also tend to reveal search patterns that weren’t obvious during setup.
The important point is that negative keyword work doesn’t end when the campaign launches.
Search behavior changes.
Campaigns change.
Markets change.
Google Ads changes.
Your acquisition criteria can change too.
So keep reviewing the searches that are triggering your ads and adjust the negative list as you learn.
This ongoing optimization is one of the reasons PPC management for real estate investors involves much more than choosing keywords, writing a few ads, and setting a daily budget.
5 Negative Keyword Mistakes We See Investors Make
1. Uploading Someone Else’s Giant Negative List
This is tempting.
You find a spreadsheet with hundreds or thousands of negatives, upload it, and assume you’ve saved yourself hours of work.
The problem is that the list wasn’t built for your business.
The person who created it may buy different properties, target different sellers, operate in different markets, or use a completely different campaign structure.
Use generic lists for ideas—not as instructions.
2. Blocking a Word Because of One Bad Search
One bad query doesn’t necessarily mean every search containing that word is bad.
“Mortgage” is a perfect example.
If “mortgage rates” is irrelevant, exclude the irrelevant intent.
Don’t automatically assume every homeowner using the word “mortgage” is somebody you don’t want.
3. Ignoring Negative Match Types
Broad, phrase, and exact negatives give you different levels of control.
Use that control.
Sometimes you want to eliminate an entire category. Other times you only want to eliminate one specific query.
4. Setting Negatives Once and Forgetting About Them
A negative keyword list isn’t finished.
It should evolve with the account.
If you haven’t looked at your search terms in months, there’s a good chance you don’t have a clear picture of what searches you’re actually paying for.
5. Optimizing for Cheap Leads Instead of Good Leads
A lower cost per lead looks great in a report.
But what happens if those leads never become viable seller opportunities?
For real estate investors, lead quality matters.
That means keyword and negative keyword decisions should eventually incorporate feedback from the people actually talking to sellers—not just what appears inside the Google Ads dashboard.
A Simple Negative Keyword Review Process
If you want a practical way to handle this, use the following process:
Step 1: Open your Search Terms report.
Look at the searches that have actually triggered your ads.
Step 2: Identify clearly irrelevant intent.
Don’t worry about building a giant list yet. Start with obvious mismatches.
Step 3: Group similar searches.
Jobs, education, rentals, financing, and buyer searches are examples of recurring themes you may uncover.
Step 4: Decide how narrowly the intent should be excluded.
Would an exact negative solve the problem? Do you need phrase match? Is the entire concept irrelevant enough for a broader exclusion?
Step 5: Check what you might accidentally block.
Before adding an aggressive negative, think through potentially valuable seller searches that contain the same words.
Step 6: Add the negative at the appropriate level.
Not every negative belongs everywhere.
Step 7: Keep monitoring.
Come back to the Search Terms report and see what changes.
That’s it.
You don’t need a 10,000-keyword negative list to start improving traffic quality.
You need to understand what people are searching for and make sensible decisions about which of those searches your business should pay to reach.
Frequently Asked Questions About Negative Keywords for Real Estate Investors
What negative keywords should real estate investors use?
Real estate investors should consider negative keywords related to searches that don’t match their acquisition goals, including employment, education, licensing, rental, and certain financing searches. The final list should be based on the actual Search Terms data in the Google Ads account rather than a generic list alone.
What is a negative keyword in Google Ads?
A negative keyword tells Google Ads that you don’t want your ad to appear for certain searches. Advertisers use negatives to filter unwanted search intent and make their targeting more precise.
Do negative keywords save money?
They can help reduce spending on irrelevant searches. However, simply adding more negatives doesn’t guarantee better performance. Poorly chosen negatives can also block potentially valuable traffic, which is why they need to be used carefully.
Should “realtor” be a negative keyword?
Not automatically.
“Realtor jobs” may be clearly irrelevant to a motivated seller campaign. A homeowner searching about whether to use a Realtor or sell directly may be much more relevant.
Look at the complete search intent before blocking “realtor” broadly.
Should “mortgage” be a negative keyword for motivated seller campaigns?
Usually not as an automatic account-wide exclusion.
Some mortgage searches have financing intent and may be irrelevant. Others could come from homeowners dealing with financial pressure who may eventually consider selling.
Review the complete query rather than judging it from the word “mortgage” alone.
What’s the difference between negative broad, phrase, and exact match?
Negative broad match can exclude searches containing all the negative terms, while negative phrase match focuses on searches containing the phrase in the specified order. Negative exact match provides narrower control over the specified search. Google’s current documentation should be consulted before implementing negatives because negative matching doesn’t work exactly like positive keyword matching.
How do I find negative keywords?
Start with the Google Ads Search Terms report. Look for searches that don’t match your campaign’s purpose, then identify recurring patterns of irrelevant intent. Generic negative keyword lists can provide ideas, but your own account data should guide the final decisions.
How often should I check my Search Terms report?
There’s no single frequency that’s right for every account. Higher-spend, newer, or rapidly changing campaigns may warrant more frequent reviews. What matters is making Search Terms analysis an ongoing part of campaign management rather than a one-time task.
Can I add too many negative keywords?
Yes.
Adding negatives too aggressively can reduce your reach and prevent ads from appearing for searches that could have produced valuable seller leads.
The goal isn’t to block as much traffic as possible.
The goal is to block the wrong traffic.
The Bottom Line
Negative keywords for real estate investors aren’t about building the biggest exclusion list.
They’re about getting clearer about who you don’t want to pay to reach.
Jobs, careers, real estate courses, licensing searches, rentals, and other obviously unrelated searches are good places to start looking. From there, your Search Terms report should guide the strategy.
And be careful with words such as “mortgage,” “realtor,” or broad property terms. They can appear in irrelevant searches, but they can also show up in searches from homeowners who may genuinely be considering selling.
The more closely your negative keyword strategy reflects actual search intent, the more control you have over where your PPC budget goes.
If you’re wondering how much of your Google Ads budget is currently going toward irrelevant searches, SoarSEM can review your PPC account, search-term strategy, and negative keyword coverage to identify potential wasted spend and missed opportunities.
Learn more about PPC management for real estate investors.