Google Ads Negative Keywords: What to Exclude and What to Keep

Negative keywords prevent eligible ads from appearing for searches that meet an exclusion rule. The result depends on the wording, negative match type and where the rule applies. Before adding one, check both sides of the decision: which unwanted searches should it exclude, and which useful searches could it remove?

A fictional heating company illustrates the risk. It wants paid repair work and considers adding “free” as a broad negative. But it advertises free repair estimates. The proposed rule would also exclude searches such as “free boiler repair estimate”. The business intended to avoid unpaid repairs; the keyword would block a legitimate first step towards a paid job.

The better approach is to define the unwanted request precisely, choose an appropriate rule and check it against real service exceptions. A longer negative list is not automatically a better one.

How negative broad, phrase and exact match differ

For Search campaigns, negative broad match excludes a search containing all the negative’s terms in any order. Negative phrase requires those terms in the specified order. Negative exact applies to the complete specified wording without extra words. Google explains these rules in its negative-keyword documentation.

Here is an original hypothetical comparison using the candidate “repair course”. It concerns only the stated negative, not all the other requirements that determine whether an ad appears.

“Not excluded by this rule” does not mean the ad will show. Other exclusions, eligibility, targeting, budgets and auction conditions can still matter.

The table also does not decide whether the rule is sensible for your business. A training provider may want every course-related search shown here. A repair-service campaign may want to exclude them. Matching mechanics implement the business decision; they do not supply it.

Negative matching is different from positive matching

Do not apply positive exact or phrase definitions to negatives. Google’s positive matching uses meaning and intent in ways that differ from these exclusion rules. The separate keyword match-types guide explains the positive side.

This matters when a reviewer assumes a negative will remove an entire concept automatically. Excluding one form of a training phrase does not establish that every related way of asking for training has been covered.

It also matters when someone expects a positive exact keyword to override an applicable negative. Google warns that overlapping negatives and regular keywords can prevent an ad from showing in its setup instructions. Check the combined configuration rather than adding a positive keyword as an attempted exception.

Where to add negative keywords

For Search, open the keyword area under Campaigns and select the negative-keyword tab for the intended scope. Choose the campaign or ad group, enter one candidate per line, specify the match type and inspect the saved result. Google’s current adding instructions also cover applying an existing list.

For account-level exclusions, Google documents Admin, Account settings, then Negative keywords. These rules apply across eligible Search and Shopping inventory in relevant campaign types. Read the account-level instructions before using that broader scope.

Interface labels may differ between views. The essential check is the destination of the change: the correct account, campaign, ad group or list. Do not paste a reviewed set into the first negative-keyword panel you find without confirming where it will apply.

After saving, inspect the text, match type and associations. A proposal written as phrase match but saved with a different type is a different rule. A list created successfully but attached to the wrong campaign is also a different configuration.

Keep a small record of the decision

For a straightforward change, a short note is sufficient: unwanted request, candidate text, match type, affected campaign and a valuable search to preserve. Keep the previous state if you are replacing or removing an existing rule.

The note should explain the business reason in ordinary language. “Repair campaign does not sell training; protect the separate workshop campaign” is more useful than “cleaned up negatives”.

You do not need a testing framework to make a careful first change. You need enough clarity that another person can understand what the rule is meant to do and recognize an unintended consequence.

Choose exclusions from the offer, not a word list

Begin with a complete sentence: “This campaign should not attract requests for this service because we do not provide it here.” Replace the vague parts with the actual service and reason.

Good candidates often come from a clear mismatch: customers requesting a product you do not sell, employment searches in a customer-acquisition campaign or training enquiries for a business that offers only repairs. The search-terms review guide explains how to find and interpret that evidence.

A low conversion count is a different kind of observation. A relevant query may have delayed outcomes, poor measurement, an unclear page or unanswered calls. Excluding it may be appropriate after a commercial review, but the absence of a conversion does not establish irrelevant intent.

Ask the service owner about exceptions

An advertising manager may know the campaign vocabulary without knowing every service exception. A dispatcher may know which equipment the technicians can repair. A sales lead may know that a seemingly small project often forms part of a larger contract.

Before turning a service boundary into an exclusion, confirm that it is current. An old negative for “commercial” may conflict with a new commercial division. A term once considered out of area may become relevant after a branch opens.

Separate permanent exclusions from temporary capacity limits. A company that never services a certain appliance has a different decision from one that has no appointment this week. Temporary rules need a reconsideration point so they do not quietly become permanent.

Protect the offer you actually advertise

List the free or introductory steps that form part of the buying journey: an estimate, consultation, sample, demonstration or initial fit call. Then check candidates against those offers.

If the ad promises a free estimate, excluding every search containing “free” conflicts with the message. The same reasoning applies to “sample” for a business offering product samples or “trial” for software sold through a trial.

This does not mean every phrase containing those words must remain eligible. It means the excluded request needs enough precision to preserve the business’s legitimate offer.

A useful negative list is specific to an account’s current services and objectives. Treat downloaded industry lists as ideas to examine, not ready-to-apply instructions.

Work through the free-estimate problem

Return to the fictional heating company. It sells repair labour and parts, provides free estimates under its stated conditions and may perform some warranty work. It wants to avoid enquiries from people expecting all repairs to be free.

The first proposed negative is the single broad word “free”. The protected search is “free boiler repair estimate”. The conflict is immediate: the rule would remove a search that describes the advertised offer.

The next idea is an exact negative for “free boiler repair”. That narrower wording would leave the longer estimate search unaffected by this candidate. But the business still needs to decide whether someone using the short phrase could be seeking valid warranty help.

The narrower rule resolves one textual conflict. It does not answer the warranty question. Ask the operations owner which requests the campaign should accept before approving it.

Do not make the technical choice do the commercial thinking

A common temptation is to choose exact match because it feels safer and move on. Exact can be appropriate for a precisely defined complete query. It can also fail to exclude longer wording the business genuinely wants to avoid.

Suppose the business confirms that a particular short request is outside the offer. The exact negative may address that observed wording while leaving more specific phrases eligible. That can be a deliberate narrow decision, provided the team understands the limited reach.

If the business wants to exclude a wider set of requests, review those expressions and useful counterexamples. Do not silently broaden the rule just because the first version did not remove every related phrase.

Use customer language, including awkward language

People do not always phrase a service request neatly. They may ask for “small boiler repair jobs”, “repair without replacing the whole system” or “estimate before I decide”. These phrases can contain words found on generic exclusion lists while describing sensible demand.

Ask someone who handles enquiries to contribute a few realistic examples. Their purpose is to expose assumptions in the proposed rule. They do not have to be exact observed searches, but label invented examples as hypothetical.

Avoid inferring a person’s income, seriousness or eventual purchase from a single word. A price question is often part of choosing a provider. The exclusion should express a service or campaign boundary the business can defend.

Apply the rule at the narrowest appropriate scope

Scope determines which advertising inherits the exclusion. A well-written rule can be harmful when attached too broadly or ineffective when it misses the intended campaign.

Imagine the heating company has three fictional campaigns: Repair, Installation and Workshops. Repair and Installation sell technician services. Workshops sells paid training.

A training exclusion may be appropriate for Repair and Installation. It would contradict the purpose of Workshops. Putting the same negative at account level changes the business decision even though the wording stays identical.

Account-level negatives

Use account-level scope for a boundary that genuinely applies across the eligible inventory it reaches. Google’s account-level documentation describes that coverage; it should not be described as a universal filter for every placement on every channel.

Before applying a broad rule, check the account’s business lines, recruitment, training, product catalogue and any other objectives. Ask whether an exception exists anywhere in that affected scope.

A business operating one narrowly defined offer may find account-level exclusions straightforward. A multi-division account needs more care. Convenience alone does not justify removing useful demand from another part of the business.

Campaign and ad-group negatives

Campaign scope can express a boundary belonging to one offer or objective. Ad-group scope can address a more local distinction in a supported campaign structure.

Be cautious about using exclusions solely to make internal labels look tidy. A customer may legitimately need both installation and repair. Removing a combined request from one place does not guarantee another campaign or ad group will receive it.

If a routing plan depends on another part of the account remaining eligible, inspect that destination’s keywords, goals, budget and exclusions as appropriate. A negative controls exclusion; it does not guarantee a handoff to your preferred alternative.

Manage shared lists through their actual membership

A shared negative list is a reusable collection applied to selected campaigns. Google explains that edits affect the campaigns sharing it in its negative-list guidance.

The list’s name does not establish where it applies. A list called “Service Campaigns” may have been attached to a training campaign during a previous account cleanup. Inspect the associations.

For the fictional heating business, a service-only list might cover Repair and Installation while deliberately excluding Workshops. The review should consider both the contents and that membership.

Two opposite membership failures

First, imagine Workshops is accidentally added to the service-only list. The training negative now reaches the campaign that sells training. The wording is correct for the service campaigns but the attachment creates a conflict.

Second, imagine Repair is accidentally removed from the list. The carefully chosen exclusion no longer applies where the team expected it. A review focused only on the list’s text would miss the coverage gap.

These failures require different corrections. In the first, review the inappropriate attachment. In the second, verify the intended campaign is covered. Do not change the negative wording unless the evidence points to a wording problem.

Separate lists when the business rules differ

If two groups of campaigns share only some exclusions, a single expanding list may become hard to understand. Consider organizing rules around meaningful shared boundaries rather than accumulating every negative in one place.

A useful list description states why the exclusions exist and which campaigns should use them. Keep exceptions visible. When a new campaign is launched, review its offer before attaching the list automatically.

The same principle applies when a list is inherited from another manager. A familiar name or large number of entries is not evidence that it fits the current business.

Check every negative before calling a conflict fixed

Suppose the broad “free” negative already exists at account level. The team adds a carefully chosen exact negative for “free boiler repair” to the Repair campaign. The protected estimate query is still affected by the old account-level rule.

Adding a narrower candidate does not remove a broader one elsewhere. Review the applicable account entries, campaign negatives, attached lists and relevant ad-group entries together.

Name the layer responsible for a conflict. “The estimate search is blocked” is less useful than “the account-level single-word negative conflicts with our free-estimate offer”. That specificity makes it possible to repair the right item without removing unrelated exclusions.

Review positive keywords and current offers too

An account can contain positive targeting for a service and an applicable negative that prevents it from reaching the intended searches. Check important offers against the combined negative configuration, especially after new services launch.

Do not assume that a positive exact keyword creates an exception to an applicable negative. If the negative is wrong for the business, resolve the negative’s wording or scope. Adding more positive variations can leave the underlying conflict intact.

At the same time, avoid deleting an entire shared list to solve one collision. The list may contain justified protections for other services. Identify the specific entry or association that needs to change.

Keep a reason for rejected candidates

A brief note explaining why “free” was rejected can prevent someone reintroducing it later from a generic checklist. The useful detail is the counterexample: “Conflicts with our advertised free estimate.”

You do not need to keep an elaborate archive of every passing phrase. Preserve the few decisions that capture important business exceptions or explain an otherwise tempting rule.

When the offer changes, reconsider the reason. A rule rejected because of a free consultation may become appropriate after that offer genuinely ends, but the new decision still needs its own scope and meaning check.

Handle variants and languages deliberately

Google says negative keywords do not generally expand to close variants, while its current documentation specifically accounts for casing and misspellings. Synonyms and singular or plural forms require separate consideration. It also treats accented and unaccented negatives differently. Check the current matching and symbols guidance.

The practical lesson is to avoid two extremes: assuming one English phrase excludes every related concept, or building hundreds of spelling entries without a demonstrated need.

For a repair business excluding training, “course”, “courses” and another word for instruction are different coverage questions. Decide which requests are outside the offer and inspect the relevant expressions. Do not add variants solely to make a list look comprehensive.

Keep meaning clear in bilingual accounts

A Canadian business may receive relevant searches in English and French or other languages. Ask someone competent in the language and service vocabulary to review exclusions and protected examples.

An English employment term should not be treated as proof that every French job-seeking phrase is excluded. Equally, unfamiliar wording should not be blocked before its meaning is understood.

Preserve the original phrase in your working file. If a translation helps the reviewer, put it beside the source rather than replacing it. Do not silently remove accents during data cleanup when those distinctions matter to the rule.

Language settings and ad-language behaviour can change. They should not be used as a shortcut for assuming that a customer can never search in another language. The exclusion decision still needs to address the actual wording and the business’s ability to serve the request.

Treat unusual symbols as an implementation question

Do not assume search operators, punctuation or programming-style wildcards will behave as an informal notation suggests. Use the official symbol rules for unusual candidates and inspect what the platform accepts.

For ordinary candidates, keep the raw words and the selected match type clear. A spreadsheet comment such as “exclude these two words except when…” is an instruction for a human to interpret, not a rule Google Ads will execute as written.

When behaviour is uncertain, leave it as a question for platform verification. A confident label in a spreadsheet does not make an unsupported matching assumption true.

Know which campaign inventory the control affects

The examples above concern Search matching. Do not transfer the table automatically to Display, Video or every surface inside a multi-channel campaign.

Google supports negative keywords and existing lists for Performance Max, but their effect is limited to Search and Shopping inventory. Its Performance Max negative-keyword instructions explain the current controls.

A Performance Max exclusion is therefore not evidence that the same words are excluded from every YouTube or Display context. If the problem concerns placements or content suitability, investigate the corresponding controls.

Google’s adding instructions describe different Display and Video behaviour. Keep those cases separate from a simple Search text-matching exercise.

Check capacity limits without turning them into targets

Google currently documents an account-level limit of 1,000 negatives. Its account-limits page lists up to 20 negative lists for a manager account and 20 of a child account’s own lists, 5,000 entries per list and 10,000 negatives per campaign, with a separate 1,000 maximum for Display and Video.

These are ceilings, not recommended list sizes. A small business should not aim to fill them. If a list becomes difficult to review, its organization and rationale matter more than the number of entries it can still accept.

Before a large import, verify the applicable current limit and campaign type. A capacity error should prompt a scope and structure review rather than hurriedly moving local exclusions to account level.

Review a proposal with a small blocked-and-kept set

For each important candidate, write one or more searches you intend to exclude and at least one useful search you want the candidate to leave unaffected. Include the campaign context.

For the fictional heating business, a compact review might look like this:

This is a reasoning exercise using invented examples. It does not simulate every part of Google’s matching or auction system.

Read the result against the business objective

A rule can match exactly as expected and still be a bad business decision. The broad “free” candidate does what its wording says, yet conflicts with the free-estimate offer.

Conversely, a narrow rule may preserve useful demand while failing to exclude all the unwanted phrases the team intended. That is a coverage question to investigate, not proof that narrow match types are universally ineffective.

Avoid reporting a passing percentage as a quality score. One important protected-offer conflict may be enough to reject a proposal even if many other examples behave as intended.

Choose examples that challenge different assumptions: ordinary wording, changed order, extra words, a relevant service exception and a different campaign scope. Repeating dozens of nearly identical phrases can hide the business exception that matters.

Make unresolved questions actionable

If the uncertainty concerns warranty work, ask the service owner. If it concerns a list attachment, inspect the actual account. If it concerns unusual platform matching, check current documentation and an appropriate diagnostic route.

Do not use “wait for more data” for a question that can be answered directly. More clicks will not tell the campaign manager what services the business has agreed to supply.

Once the question is resolved, update the proposed rule and rerun the relevant examples. Keep the reason for the change so later reviewers understand whether the business changed its offer or the original implementation was incorrect.

Clean up an inherited negative list carefully

An inherited list can contain years of decisions whose reasons are no longer visible. Resist two opposite responses: assuming every entry is correct because it has always been there, or deleting the list because it looks overcomplicated.

Start with the business’s current offers and the campaigns using the list. Review the most consequential candidates first: words that name an active service, a free introductory offer, a new location or another part of the business. Those entries have an identifiable possibility of conflict.

Then inspect a few exclusions that clearly still express a valid boundary. They help you understand the list’s original purpose. A list intended to keep recruitment out of service campaigns may remain useful even if some entries need narrowing.

A hypothetical new-service conflict

Imagine a photography studio that originally sold portrait sessions. Its customer campaign used a training-related exclusion because the studio did not teach photography. Later, the business launches paid workshops and creates a workshop campaign.

The old exclusion was reasonable for the original offer. It becomes a problem if someone attaches the same list to Workshops without reviewing its purpose. The new service has changed the account’s needs.

The sensible response is to identify where the training exclusion applies and protect the new campaign. Deleting every old negative from the account would discard unrelated decisions. Leaving the attachment unchanged would make the new campaign work against an inherited rule.

Ask the studio owner whether training should remain excluded from portrait-session advertising. The answer may still be yes. That leads to a scope correction rather than a universal reversal of the old business decision.

Preserve uncertainty when the original rationale is missing

Some entries will not have an obvious explanation. Search the available account history and ask the person responsible for the offer before changing a consequential rule. A terse entry could relate to a service the business cannot provide, a contractual boundary or a misunderstanding that has since been resolved.

If the reason cannot be recovered, classify the entry as needing review. Decide what evidence would justify retaining, narrowing or removing it. Missing documentation is a maintenance problem; it does not prove the exclusion itself is wrong.

A proposed removal should consider the demand it would reopen. Is the business prepared to receive those enquiries? Does the current ad and page explain the offer clearly? Reopening eligibility is a campaign decision, not merely tidying a spreadsheet.

Make future reviews easier

Give important shared lists meaningful descriptions and retain a few useful counterexamples. When a service launches, a location expands or a free offer changes, revisit the exclusions connected with that vocabulary.

You do not need to review every negative from scratch whenever one campaign changes. Use the change to identify which rules and memberships could be affected. This keeps maintenance proportionate while preventing a forgotten local decision from becoming an unexplained account-wide restriction.

Troubleshoot an unwanted search after an exclusion

Seeing a familiar unwanted phrase in a report can be frustrating. Before broadening the rule, establish what the report actually shows and when the activity happened.

First, compare the report period with the date of the saved change. A historical search does not disappear merely because a new exclusion is added later. If the report combines days before and after implementation, split the period before concluding that the rule failed.

Next, distinguish a literal search-term row from a grouped insight category. Google explains that category names summarize themes and may not be the exact queries served in its search terms insights guidance. A category label containing an excluded word is not enough to diagnose a matching failure.

Confirm that the intended rule reaches the reported activity

Check the campaign associated with the row. Is the negative at that campaign’s level, inherited from an applicable account rule or supplied by a list actually attached to it? Similar campaign names can make a scope mistake easy to miss.

If the control is a shared list, inspect the membership at the relevant time. Creating a list and adding entries does not by itself explain which campaign activity it affects.

For a multi-channel campaign, confirm that the reported problem concerns inventory the negative control covers. A Search exclusion cannot be evaluated as though it were a universal placement block.

These checks often answer the question without changing the words. If the negative was saved in a different campaign, replacing exact with broad would leave the scope problem unresolved.

Compare the wording and match type

Read the saved rule and the reported search side by side. Does the phrase contain extra words that an exact negative would leave unaffected? Is the order different from a phrase negative? Is a singular or plural version involved?

Those are specific coverage questions. Broaden or add a candidate only when the broader decision is justified and useful searches remain protected. A rule failing to cover one intended phrase is not permission to exclude every query containing the topic.

Keep the current casing and misspelling guidance in mind. Do not assume that every apparent variation requires another entry, and do not treat a general close-variant statement as cancelling Google’s specific documented exceptions.

For unusually long searches, Google also describes an edge case involving a negative after the sixteenth word. If that condition appears relevant, consult the detailed negative-keyword rules rather than forcing it through a simple local matching model.

Escalate the remaining uncertainty with a precise example

If the dates, wording, scope and inventory appear consistent, preserve the exact relevant row and saved configuration. Use an appropriate official support or diagnostic route to investigate the discrepancy. Remove unrelated customer or account information before sharing evidence.

A useful question is: “This reported search occurred in this campaign after this candidate was saved at this scope; which part of the current matching or inventory rules explains the result?” That is much easier to investigate than “negatives do not work”.

Do not fill the gap with an invented account result or a claim that a local script proves Google is wrong. The script can check a simplified expectation. The actual platform behaviour remains a separate observation to resolve.

Use the advanced worksheet when the change is complex

The existing negative-keyword exclusion matrix and validation kit contains a blank CSV, fictional examples, a field dictionary, instructions and an offline checking script.

It can help a team compare a larger set of candidates, preserve important examples and distinguish intended behaviour from observations. It is not a Google Ads upload specification or a reproduction of Google’s matching system.

The included checks concern file structure and simple documented expectations. They cannot prove that a live ad will serve, that every misspelling behaves a certain way or that a proposed exclusion will improve lead quality. Keep any case outside the simple model unresolved rather than assigning it a fabricated pass.

If you adapt the worksheet, keep the business context alongside the candidate. The same search can have different desired outcomes in the Repair and Workshops campaigns. Combining them into one verdict would lose the most important scope distinction.

Use the additional fields only when they help explain the decision. A small change may need a few examples and a short note. A multi-campaign shared-list migration may benefit from the fuller record.

When the right decision is to leave the list alone

A review does not need to produce a new negative to be useful. If the visible searches fit the offer and the proposed exclusions would remove reasonable buyers, keep the current opportunity while investigating the actual performance concern.

For example, a company may dislike receiving price questions even though it sells a service customers normally compare. If those enquiries are genuinely suitable, the next improvement might be a clearer quotation process or more useful first response. Excluding “price” could simply hide the conversations without improving the business’s ability to win them.

A reviewer can also conclude that evidence is too incomplete for a performance-based exclusion. Name the missing information and the next decision. This is preferable to choosing a dramatic change merely to show activity.

Keep the negative list focused on decisions you can explain. Its purpose is to control unwanted eligibility where the business has a defensible reason. It does not need to absorb every concern about cost, sales conversion or customer communication.

Check the saved change, then watch its effect

Before implementation, compare the final proposal with the actual target. Confirm the exact text, match type, campaign or list membership and any old rule being replaced. Keep enough of the previous configuration to investigate or reverse a problem.

After saving, inspect the resulting state. A successful save is useful, but the verification should confirm that the intended rule exists at the intended scope. Google’s edit and remove guidance describes the available controls.

Then review both the intended effect and possible harm. Did visible unsuitable searches change? Did relevant enquiries or important offers also lose exposure? Were budgets, ads, destinations or staffing changed at the same time?

A missing search-term row alone does not prove an exclusion worked because reporting has visibility limits. A fall in total leads does not prove the negative caused it. Interpret the observation with the configuration, comparable periods and actual enquiry evidence.

Keep the lead-quality diagnosis guide available when the outcome question concerns unsuitable or unresolved requests. A correct exclusion can address a clear demand mismatch; it cannot repair missed callbacks or a misleading service promise elsewhere.

The best stopping point is a rule you can explain, a saved configuration you have checked and a defined reason to revisit it. If you need help reviewing inherited negatives or protecting useful demand, discuss your Google Ads account with Canada Create with the relevant campaigns, current offers and a few examples of what should be excluded and preserved.

Frequently asked questions

What do negative keywords do in Google Ads?

They stop eligible ads from appearing for searches that meet an exclusion rule. The result depends on the wording, the negative match type and the level where the rule applies. Before adding one, check which unwanted searches it removes and which useful searches it could remove too.

Should negative keywords be exact match?

Pick the negative match type for the job. Negative broad excludes a search containing all its terms in any order, negative phrase needs the terms in the given order, and negative exact applies only to the complete wording without extra words. Negatives do not use the meaning-based matching of positive keywords, so one negative will not remove a whole concept.

How do I add account-level negative keywords in Google Ads?

Google documents the path as Admin, then Account settings, then Negative keywords. Those rules apply across eligible Search and Shopping inventory in the relevant campaign types, so read the account-level instructions before using such a wide scope. For narrower rules, add negatives at campaign or ad group level instead.

What are examples of negative keywords in Google Ads?

A repair company might exclude repair course, since people searching for training are not buying a repair. A heating company thinking of excluding free should stop and check, because it advertises free repair estimates and that broad negative would block a legitimate first step toward a paid job. Good examples come from your own offer, not a generic list.

How do I find negative keywords for Google Ads?

Read the search terms report and ask which real searches your offer cannot satisfy. Talk to the person who runs the service about exceptions, because a word that looks unwanted may describe something you actually sell. Use customer language, including awkward phrasing, when you write the rule.

How do I make a negative keyword list in Google Ads?

Create a shared list for exclusions that follow one business rule, then attach it only to the campaigns where that rule applies. Manage the list through its actual membership, since a list left off one campaign or added to the wrong one causes opposite failures. Keep separate lists when the business rules differ.

How do I check whether negative keywords are blocking my Google Ads?

Confirm that the intended rule actually reaches the campaign or ad group where the activity appears, then compare the wording and match type with the search. Google warns that overlapping negatives and regular keywords can stop an ad from showing. Check every negative before calling a conflict fixed.

Should I use a ready-made Google Ads negative keyword list?

Choose exclusions from your offer instead of a downloaded word list. A generic list can block searches your business wants, such as a free estimate request that turns into paid work. Keep a short reason beside each negative so the next reviewer knows why it is there.