This week’s PPCChat session centred around PPC guardrails like negative keywords, placement exclusions, and ad copy adjustments that help advertisers filter out unwanted traffic or audiences. The discussion explored whether PPC professionals actively use such guardrails in their campaigns, how these practices differ across platforms, and what additional guardrail features they wish existed. The session was hosted by Julie F. Bacchini, who invited industry experts to share their insights and experiences.
Q1: Do you utilize any type of guardrails in your PPC accounts? Which guardrails do you use? Does this vary by platform?
Yes, I absolutely use guardrails! Most common are negative keywords, placement exclusions and audience exclusions. @NeptuneMoon
Portfolio bidding strategies with a max CPC cap if I’m using a Target CPA @Pete_Bowen
Max CPC caps are a big big help depending on the space. Target CPAs can help too. @revaminkoff
Frequency capping when doing retargeting. @NeptuneMoon
There aren’t many available these days, unless you’re running mCPC. But negative keywords for sure, and sometimes some geo-target bid adjustments. @AnthonyMcDaniel
Do we consider not using things like targeting expansion guardrails? I would say yes. @NeptuneMoon
Negative Keywords, Negative Placements, Bid caps, freq caps, a LOT of geo exclusions. @JuliaVyse
On very small accounts that require maximum guardrail-iness, I do use mCPC sometimes, with tight bids, and lots of device, audience, demo bid adjustments (aka all the guardrails available). @AnthonyMcDaniel
Oh on the geo exclusions… in Google Ads, I will add every place I am NOT targeting as an exclusion. Should you have to do this? Of course not. Do you if you don’t want ads showing in weird places? Yes. @NeptuneMoon
@NeptuneMoon I’d definitely consider removing expansion + automated settings as a guardrail. ESPECIALLY on Meta campaigns. @AnthonyMcDaniel
@NeptuneMoon I don’t use any of the expansions — and that is a guardrail to keep my ads showing up where I want them to. No audience expansion, no automatically created text copy, no dynamic extensions, no landing page expansion…@revaminkoff
@NeptuneMoon – Learned that the hard way with Google Display showing ads all over the world when only distinct geos in TX were targeted. @JeffreyHain
Turning off auto applied anything really…@NeptuneMoon
Also the content type placement exclusions are really helpful for the Google Display network – take anything you can get. @revaminkoff
@NeptuneMoon Good thought on excluding non-targeted locations, especially as Google and other platforms continually loosen the rules on what they allow for “targeted” locations. @AnthonyMcDaniel
Negative Keywords, Excluded Placements, Excluded Locations (not very often), Frequency Cap and Max CPC Cap..@alimehdimukadam
It is an extra step to exclude the locations, but worth it. I have a sheet with countries and states to make it faster. @NeptuneMoon
It’s super interesting how long it took for negative keywords/placements to come up. @navahhopkins
@AnthonyMcDaniel and add in that while G and M change their location rules, Apple will fully not let the platforms even know where someone is. It’s a rich tapestry of nonsense. @JuliaVyse
Acknowledging that all default guardrails eventually made their way into chat..@navahhopkins
@navahhopkins it came up first I think? @JuliaVyse
I will also add, for all the AI being touted, geo is one area that is very neglected. Platforms do not match a town with a zip code with a county for example very well. So you have to include all 3 types if you want to be found that way…@NeptuneMoon
Turning off search partners (on Google) and Meta’s extended network is usually a good idea, although I’ll typically test first to prove that out for campaigns. Every once in a while those extra networks actually perform decently. @AnthonyMcDaniel
I still try to stick to phrase and exact where possible as a guardrail against having too many SQR issues. @revaminkoff
You are right @JuliaVyse – I missed it – it looked like CPC caps dominated for the first few comments. @navahhopkins
It’s just really hard to play the necessary whackamole with negative keywords in the SQR all the time. @revaminkoff
Turning off Google Search Partners at the start. You can test into it later. @JeffreyHain
Purely from a guardrail perspective. I have a script that checks placements for display by CTR and domain names like .xyz. Have found them to be spammy/bot, so it runs automatically daily to check for those and then exclude it. And an anomaly detection script to check for Conversion rate & spend, cpc, CTR fluctuations etc @alimehdimukadam
I might have missed it – has anyone mentioned sharing conversion data to be a guard rail against waste? @navahhopkins
@navahhopkins I do not think so..@NeptuneMoon
For what it’s worth – sharing 1P data is the best way to make sure automation/algos actually do the job you want them to do. @navahhopkins
@navahhopkins No, and I think that’s an awesome callout. Certainly, the more data sharing the better on the guardrail front. @revaminkoff
@navahhopkins – Last year, I saw severe fluctuations in CVR data and shared it with our Google reps. They investigated, acknowledged it was there, but couldn’t identify the cause. @JeffreyHain
@JeffreyHain did you add in data exclusions to help the algo understand it was working on bad data? @navahhopkins
Excluding existing customers & recent visitors from some campaigns I.e prospecting (across platforms) @alimehdimukadam
@navahhopkins – No it wasn’t suggested. @alimehdimukadam – We were already excluding current customers. @JeffreyHain
SCRIPTS – 1 URL checker, 2 channel split on PMax, 3 Quality score tracker over time! – whilst they aren’t specifically guardrails they are my red flag trackers (I also use a Max CPC on my bid strats) @Meriem
Q2: Are there specific circumstances that cause you to implement guardrails in your PPC accounts? Does this vary by platform?
Taking notes. @navahhopkins
Some are standard for me from the beginning, but others may be triggered if the accounts starts behaving weirdly or spend goes wonky. I will look for a reason and if needed add an exclusion or negative etc. @NeptuneMoon
Honestly I think it’s important to have guardrails in from day 1 – the platforms all need time to learn and the goal is to waste as little as possible while they do. I can’t think of any business type that can afford/is designed such that it should be unfettered in all things? @revaminkoff
This question can also be interpreted as are there things that might happen in an account that would make you add a guardrail? @NeptuneMoon
I’ve also got a standard list of guardrails that I apply from the beginning. My approach is tight first, loose later. @Pete_Bowen
So let’s say for example, conversions fall off a cliff… You investigate and see that you had a big jump in ads showing on a particular placement that have no conversions. I would add that placement as an exclusion. @NeptuneMoon
Day 1 negatives for search and new accounts is an absolute must. @alimehdimukadam
@alimehdimukadam Do you have a standard list that you start with @NeptuneMoon
Smaller accounts = more guardrails @AnthonyMcDaniel
I have the location list with IDs in Google Sheets so I’m prepared to paste into inclusion/exclusion lists in Editor if Google starts playing loose goosey with campaign location settings. Sometimes I’ll just start with every country in the world excluded except the ones I’m targeting. I know logically that may sound like overkill but it’s saved me a few times now. @timmhalloran
I used to have a great standard negative keyword list that we’d gotten from a google rep – I’m not sure what happened to it…@revaminkoff
@timmhalloran I do that every time @NeptuneMoon
Remember that guardrails one day are constraints another. I’m adding a PILE of geos right now to account for a strike action, and obvs I can’t keep those applied once agreements are reached and stores open. @JuliaVyse
A specific scenario: In 1 account, I recently saw an ENORMOUS increase in form lead conversions from display campaigns, which ended up being spam fills. The campaign had been on max conversions, averaging about a dozen conversions each month (again, it was display, so not crazy), but suddenly it had hundreds in less than a month. I pulled off automated bidding, since it appeared that Google had found a bot farm and decided to dump all budget because “it was getting maximum conversions” that way. So the guardrails went up! @AnthonyMcDaniel
@AnthonyMcDaniel great example. The number go up habit can lead to big payoffs for bot farms. @JuliaVyse
I think we tend to forget that the machines that run the platforms are simplistic thinkers too. We ask them to optimize for one thing and they do that without taking anything else into consideration like we might. @NeptuneMoon
@NeptuneMoon and @JuliaVyse Yep! While it was frustrating, I understand it. However, it makes me very wary of automated bidding, since I know these situations can, and do, happen. And I’m already apprehensive of auto-bidding, haha..@AnthonyMcDaniel
It does not mean they can’t get good results, it just means that you have to be careful what you tell it to work toward and put necessary stops in place to keep it from chasing expensive squirrels. @NeptuneMoon
You have to always be thinking about and anticipating edge cases accordingly. @revaminkoff
Seasonality – I add specific winter terms to stop our ads triggering for when we move to the tail end of seasonal sale to prioritise budget for new season! I always review negatives each season though as you may have added something which is relevant for next season too! @Meriem
The circumstance of the networks to have a goal of extracting as much value out of my client vs my client’s goal to extract as much value out of the network makes guardrails absolutely necessary. @Chriskostecki
Q3: One of the biggest guardrails available today is negative keywords – how do you utilize this function? And if you do not, why not? There has been a lot out there recently about people “overusing” negative keywords, and advice to not use them so much, so we should discuss!
Yes. I put a lot of time into negative keywords up front and keep adding them as we go along. I’m not convinced about overusing them yet. @Pete_Bowen
I think this is a great example of “your mileage may vary” in PPC. Some folks swear that you’re really hurting your accounts by using negatives too often or too much. Others say that is ridiculous, you need to speed up the machine’s learning. I am more in the speed up the machine’s learning camp and also the clients do not have the budget or patience to let the machines map an entirely new world of possibilities. @NeptuneMoon
An important facet that is often overlooked is statistical significance. I’ve heard of people pausing keywords, or excluding terms because they don’t have conversions after just 5-10 clicks. That’s not a sample size, y’all. That’s random chance! @AnthonyMcDaniel
I also think we should acknowledge human knowledge and how it can shortcut some things that should be short cut. I don’t need queries tested that we have already definitively discovered do not convert. @NeptuneMoon
The best results come when you combine human knowledge with machine performance – centaurs. Neg KWs are just one example if this @Pete_Bowen
@NeptuneMoon Yep! Should be easy to exclude “jobs”, “employment” from most campaigns, haha..@AnthonyMcDaniel
One of the important nuances some people miss is how negatives work. Phrase Negative, Broad Negative
Exact Negative work differently than targeting. Broad Negatives for terms like jobs, careers, free, guide, how to, etc. (can be exhaustive – depending on client & campaign) @alimehdimukadam
And, if me excluding searches that contain “Download” from an immigration lawyer actually cut conversions, it’s a small price to pay for excluding the junk @Pete_Bowen
And weekly search term report scanning to keep adding (for local biz owners – this could mean adding competition biz names, etc). @alimehdimukadam
I use a lot of negatives on a complex program I run where themes overlap. Several program managers all need the same keywords and the brand keywords are damn near identical. So brand keywords in the generic campaigns to shape traffic, and hella negatives across different programs. @JuliaVyse
So a great example of a phrase negative would be a town + state. If you are targeting a town in say PA, but there is a town with the same name in NJ, and you did not exclude NJ as a location (and even if you did, honestly) I would add TownName NJ as a phrase negative so I did not get traffic from an area my client does not serve. @NeptuneMoon
I love negatives… but I feel like some basics are missing when people are reviewing what to exclude. 1 – Why and what is triggering that term… 2 – why do you need to exclude it … 3 – does it need to be a temp exclusion e.g. stock issues! I’ve seen people exclude terms on shopping campaigns when it’s being driven by 1 product, when realistically they need to pause or optimise the product… (for example) @Meriem
I think the “too many negative keywords” argument is generally more valid when you’ve got an account that you’re trying to scale – i.e. you’ve captured low hanging fruit and now you’re open to reconsidering keywords that may not have been as efficient because you’re looking for that incrementality that you weren’t before. @AnthonyMcDaniel
I think we should also point out here that search advertising captures demand it does not generate it… so figuring out where that line is in keywords where you get more leads/sales but are not off in fantasy exploration land is key. @NeptuneMoon
@NeptuneMoon 100% I’ve been getting annoyed recently having to explain this to so many people, that I wrote a blog about it LOL (Which is sitting on my might post list LOL) @Meriem
One of the more exciting and robust guardrail accomplishments I’ve managed to pull of has occurred just within the last 24hrs. I’ve got clients that have very common overlapped services, but completely the opposite. Example: Vasectomy and Vasectomy Reversals. We want to try to lean in on some broad matching in Reversal, but Google LOVES to supply loads of straight vasectomy (non reversal term centric) terms at us. Scripted up a way to allowlist the terms that must be in the query, otherwise negated at impression >0, all automatically. @Ryansappington
@Meriem Like when a client only does search advertising and then is befuddled when there are significant shifts in traffic/demand? @NeptuneMoon
I just had a client turn off ALL social media and YT (the why is a bigger convo) and then ask why search traffic volume is down. Sir, you reduced your own available impressions. I’m capturing what I can capture here. @JuliaVyse
Campaign and account-level negatives are hard to “overuse”. Ad group-level “sculpting” can clearly cause problems. For high-cost local markets, we’ll take the top 10k words in the language, subtract place names and pronouns and all that, and take out the handful of words that are in the target keywords. Volume down, CPC up, lead quality gets way better. @DanThies
We have all heard the stats of how many new searches are out there every day that has never been seen before. If you are not getting the most value out of your targeting, negate until you do. And yes, have I told you about the 4S research…@Chriskostecki
I’ve seen a lot of accounts with too many NKWs. I try to keep them as short tail as possible, as long as it makes sense to do so (doesn’t conflict with other possible kws). Adding to my above: It’s really important to understand the difference in how KW Match Types and NKW Match Types work. Hint: It’s not the same! @williamhboggs
Q4: Are there any circumstances where you would remove all guardrails and let the platform do what it will with no restrictions? Does this vary by platform? And if you do/have done this, in which type of industry are you advertising?
YOLO.. @Pete_Bowen
Hmmm… Maybe if I really hated my client… lol @AnthonyMcDaniel
I can’t think of circumstances when I would just let if fly with no restrictions of any kind @NeptuneMoon
Honestly, the only situation I could see this as even a possibility is if someone had budget to spend and simply wanted to know what would happen if all guardrails were turned off, just out of pure curiosity @AnthonyMcDaniel
I know the platforms all very much want us to do this…@NeptuneMoon
I’ll run tests with some ad sets/groups running more broadly once we have good conversion data in the platforms, but just YOLOing (to use Peter’s phrasing) that’s a big nope. @AllyQuilty_MKTG
hard no from up here. @JuliaVyse
Honestly though, I’d love for someone to just devote a nice, chunky budget to see what would happen for academic purposes. Can PPCchat get a grant to test this out? @AnthonyMcDaniel
I would love to read about someone else’s experiments with it though! @NeptuneMoon
Even if I was asked to do it, I’d refuse. I don’t want to spend money randomly. I want to spend a client’s money and get results.@JeffreyHain
When I’m feeling Wild LOL….I’ve done it a few times, where there are multiple issues with an account i first take over, so I remove all negatives and Uncap the CPC’s on a Monday and then start digging and cleaning. I let me client know the process before hand so it’s clear of expectations! @Meriem
Would do it for Meta sometimes when the campaigns & account in general need a kickstart or a boost. When some advertisers run ads seasonally, I have found letting Meta do the heavy lifting without guardrails initially works. @alimehdimukadam
Recently i’ve found that people are running Meta Ads and not putting any audiences letting Meta do it and it’s doing nothing.. So my new recommendation is giving it SOME direction by adding a few audiences and letting it grow from there! Also – I ALWAYS have a traffic campaign as BAU to feed the A+ LOL @Meriem
If and only if the networks pay me more than my clients and guarantee steady income to run campaigns off the chain, then I would try capture as much of the conversations as possible and use them to market myself as using guardrails. @Chriskostecki
I don’t really know any instance where no guardrails would make sense. @DiiPooler
Q5: Are there guardrail capabilities that you wish were available? Does this vary by platform?
Nothing new, but I wish they’d stop taking them away, and give some back to us! For example, I wish we could still apply device, demo, audience bid adjustments to campaigns using auto-bid strats, and they’d be taken seriously instead of just as suggestions (or not considered at all). @AnthonyMcDaniel
I wish you could build a more sophisticated bid strategy. Like tell the system you want a ROAS of 2.5 but CPL not to exceed $150 or something like that. Prioritize the factors @NeptuneMoon
If they’d give us all the data that would be nice. @DanThies
Like client wants this ROAS but will blow a gasket if to get that their CPL is sky high @NeptuneMoon
And Meta’s recent removal of behavioral/interest targeting as a true guardrail (they’re not just suggestions) is not great. @AnthonyMcDaniel
@AnthonyMcDaniel Microsoft supports that @navahhopkins
I’d like a”never show this ad if someone searches for another business by name” button @Pete_Bowen
Ooohhh how about “please do not match my business name to my competitors in queries” @NeptuneMoon
my dreaming heart: please let an account not self-bid. I would really like for some of my Gov campaigns to be able to use the same keyword and have the signals just shape the search result. @JuliaVyse
You know what else would be nice if all platforms let you choose a level of something like audience expansion of low, medium and go nuts. @NeptuneMoon
@JuliaVyse, not sure I understand. can you expand on this? @NeptuneMoon didn’t Google have an audience expansion slider back in the day? those were the days… @AnthonyMcDaniel
The only guardrail I need – do not email me or my client with strategies and asking to schedule a call. Give me an opt-out @alimehdimukadam
I feel like they might have? Facebook did at one point too. @NeptuneMoon
I just wish they wouldn’t make it difficult to use the guardrails. there is a button in some of our meta accounts that says “limit the reach of your campaigns” you have to click in order to input targeting. It really confused some of our entry level new hires! @AllyQuilty_MKTG
@AllyQuilty_MKTG And stop with those dark patterns all together @NeptuneMoon
I wish Meta was a better platform overall and gave more insights.. We complain all the time about Google Ads but OMG Meta is just redic! We used to say triple check… But with Meta you check and if you edit anything you have to do the check AGAIN as it refreshes all the AI crap to opt in again LOL @Meriem
“Customers who did this had fewer conversions” or stuff like that. “Most advertisers don’t use geographic exclusions” or a tighter geo setting. Yeah, well, bet you’re happy about that ad platform! Does not mean it is what in advertiser’s actual best interest though. @NeptuneMoon
@AllyQuilty_MKTG And now, even selecting that will only make the behavioral/interest audiences “suggestions” rather than firm targets. Only 1st party audiences can be truly “targeted” @AnthonyMcDaniel
Right @AnthonyMcDaniel It makes my job a lot harder! @AllyQuilty_MKTG
@NeptuneMoon 100% to this prompt you mentioned: “Customers who did this had fewer conversions” You know what would make me trust an ad platform? If I turned on an expanded targeting feature or some AI thing that those platforms usually push on you, and then it told me based on what it knows about my conversion rates or performance: “Are you sure you want to turn this on? It may deplete your budget early and not result in a net increase in conversions.” Boom. That would condition me to believe the prompt the next time I saw it. Instead of literally having the opposite affect on me right now. If I see the prompt tell me not to do something, then (I’m conditioned) to assume, I’m doing a good job with my targeting. @timmhalloran
Wouldn’t that be something, @timmhalloran Maybe someday when Googles a nonprofit company it’ll happen. @Ryansappington
Ahem @navahhopkins it’d be pretty cool if any ad platform did something like that. Just sayin’ @timmhalloran
I agree that I wish they would talk to us like they acknowledge that our clients have goals that are not just about spending more money on the platform/with them/making them(the ad platform) the maximum amount of money. @revaminkoff
Better seasonality guardrails. @Chriskostecki
@timmhalloran the feedback is heard. We’ll try to incorporate more! @navahhopkins
I hate how daily budgets work – especially if you don’t run ads every day of the week. Platforms won’t spend more than your daily budget * 30.4 but if you don’t run ads on weekends, your db will be higher to hit your monthly spend goals, so platforms can overspend! @williamhboggs
PPCChat Participants
- Julie F Bacchini @NeptuneMoon
- Peter Bowen @Pete_Bowen
- Reva Minkoff @revaminkoff
- Anthony McDaniel @AnthonyMcDaniel
- Julia Vyse @JuliaVyse
- Jeffrey Hain @JeffreyHain
- Ally Quilty @AllyQuilty_MKTG
- Ali Mehdi Mukadam @alimehdimukadam
- Timothy Halloran @timmhalloran
- Ryan Sappington @Ryansappington
- Boggs @williamhboggs
- Meriem @Meriem
- Chris Kostecki @Chriskostecki
- Dan Thies @DanThies
- Dii Pooler @DiiPooler
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