Google Ads Keyword & Negative Keyword Skills
16 skills Claude can run against your live accounts through MCP Ads. Keyword research, forecasts, match types and cannibalisation, together with the search-term mining that turns wasted queries into negative keywords and shared negative lists. One job seen from both ends.
Google Ads - Keywords
Keyword skills cover the whole life of a keyword: researching new ones, deciding match types, spotting which existing terms deserve more bid and which should be paused, and finding the long-tail queries that convert cheaply but never made it into the account. Agencies run the performance optimisation weekly or fortnightly as part of the Monday routine and the research and planning skills whenever a client adds a product, a location or a season. Solo business owners usually run keyword research once at launch and the cannibalisation finder when they notice CPCs creeping up for no obvious reason. The Google Ads account has to be connected through MCP Ads; keyword research also benefits from Search Console being connected, because the queries a site already ranks for are the cheapest evidence of intent you will find. Claude reads keyword performance, quality scores, search term reports and, where relevant, auction insights, then applies the procedure in the skill rather than improvising. The output is a table you can act on: keyword, current match type, the metric that triggered the recommendation, the proposed action (pause, bid up, bid down, change match type, add as exact) and a one-line reason. Research skills return grouped keyword lists by theme and intent with suggested match types and starting bids, ready to paste into a new campaign build.
Splits all keyword performance into brand and non-brand segments. Brand keywords convert cheaply but mostly reach people already looking for you. Non-brand keywords reach new customers but cost more. Shows the true cost of acquiring a new customer and justifies brand campaign budget.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Split performance by brand vs non-brand keywords
Builds a conquest keyword strategy targeting competitor brand names and category terms. Identifies which competitors are worth targeting, what keywords to bid on, how to write ads that legally reference competitors without using their trademarks in copy, and what bid strategy to use.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Build a competitor keyword strategy for [account]
Finds keywords appearing across multiple campaigns that cause your own ads to compete against each other in the same auction. Internal competition inflates CPCs and wastes budget. Identifies conflicts, calculates the cost, and gives campaign-level negative keyword solutions.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Find keyword cannibalization issues
Takes a keyword list and monthly budget and forecasts expected impressions, clicks, conversions, CPA, and ROAS. Gives three scenarios: conservative, realistic, and optimistic. Useful for new client proposals and setting expectations before a campaign launches.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Forecast performance for [keyword list] with [budget] per month
Analyses all keyword performance over the past 14 days. Segments into Stars (profitable, scale), Workers (on target, maintain), Drains (over target, reduce), and Dead Weight (no results, pause). Gives exact bid change recommendations for every keyword that needs adjusting.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Optimise keywords for [campaign/account]
Generates a full keyword list for a new campaign or expansion. Groups keywords by intent (informational, commercial, transactional) and by theme for proper ad group structure. Recommends match types per keyword, estimates competition and suggested bids, and outputs an upload-ready list.
For: Everyone
Research keywords for [product/service] campaign
Identifies high-intent long-tail keywords (3-5+ words) not yet in the account. Long-tail keywords typically have 40-70% lower CPCs than broad head terms while converting better because the intent is more specific. Groups opportunities by theme and builds new ad group structures.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Find long-tail keyword opportunities
Reviews match type distribution across all campaigns. Compares CTR, conversion rate, and CPA by match type. Identifies broad match keywords pulling in irrelevant searches, and exact match keywords too narrow to capture volume. Recommends specific match type changes per keyword.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Review our match type strategy
Pulls the full search terms report and classifies every query. Identifies converting search terms not yet added as keywords, high-spend irrelevant terms to add as negatives, and match type adjustments needed. The highest-ROI weekly task in any Google Ads account — fully automated.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Mine search terms and tell me what to add as keywords and what to block
Plans keyword expansion and bid strategy for seasonal peaks: Black Friday, Christmas, summer sales, back-to-school, or any industry-specific period. Identifies seasonal keywords to add, when to start increasing bids, how much budget to reserve, and when to scale back after the peak.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Plan keywords for [seasonal period] for [client]
Google Ads - Negative Keywords
Negative keyword skills are the most-used skills in the library, because search term mining is the one job every Google Ads manager does every week and nobody enjoys. The weekly search term review runs on a Monday, or daily for accounts spending heavily on broad match. The converter and the shared list builder are run right after a mining session, or when an agency takes over an account and finds thirty campaigns each carrying a different copy of the same negatives. You need the Google Ads account connected through MCP Ads; if the account sits under a manager account, connecting the MCC lets Claude build shared lists that apply across every client at once. Claude pulls the search terms report for the period, separates terms that have already converted from those with spend and no result, and applies the skill's rules for deciding match type and level: obvious junk goes as phrase negatives at campaign level, near-miss competitor or job-seeker terms go at the right ad group, and anything that appears in more than one campaign is proposed for a shared list. The output is a formatted negative list grouped by campaign and match type, plus a short list of search terms that surprised the skill because they converted and are not yet keywords. Claude adds the negatives only when you confirm, and reports exactly what it wrote.
Generates a sector-specific negative keyword list for your industry. Legal, real estate, finance, SaaS, eCommerce, healthcare, education, automotive, home services, hospitality, and more all have known wasted-spend patterns. This blocks them from day one with the right match types.
For: Everyone
Generate a negative keyword list for [industry]
Reviews all existing negatives for completeness, accuracy, conflicts, and freshness. Finds missing negative categories still letting irrelevant traffic through, outdated negatives that no longer apply, and over-aggressive negatives blocking good traffic. Gives a completeness score and a priority fix list.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Audit our negative keywords — are we blocking enough irrelevant terms
Cross-references all negative keywords against active keyword lists. Finds negatives that are accidentally blocking good keywords from serving — a common and invisible cause of low impression share. Run after every large negative upload or when impression share drops unexpectedly.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Check if our negatives are blocking any keywords they should not
Builds a comprehensive negative keyword list tailored to your industry. Covers all common wasted-spend patterns: job seekers, DIY intent, wrong product variants, informational searches, student research, and competitor exclusions where relevant. Prevents obvious waste before it happens.
For: Everyone
Build a negative keyword list for [industry/business]
Paste in a list of irrelevant search terms from the search terms report and this skill converts them into properly formatted negative keywords at the right match type and the right campaign level. Saves manual formatting time and prevents match type errors when adding negatives.
For: Agencies, Business Owners
Convert these search terms into negatives: [paste list]
Builds shared negative keyword lists and applies them across multiple campaigns. Instead of adding the same negatives to every campaign manually, one shared list covers all of them. Recommends the right list structure for the account and which campaigns each list should apply to.
For: Agencies
Set up shared negative keyword lists for our account
Run these skills
Download a skill or a whole set above, or copy a trigger phrase into Claude once the MCP Ads connector is connected. Claude reads the procedure, pulls live data and works through the steps; nothing changes in an account until you approve it.
These skills call the google-ads MCP tools. See the connect guide to link the account first.
Other skill collections
23 skills
Google Ads Bids & Budgets Skills6 skills
Meta Ads Skills: Audits, Audiences, Creative & Reporting16 skills
SEO Skills: Technical Audits, Content & Rankings12 skills
Google Analytics 4 Skills: Traffic, Funnels, Ecommerce & Leads16 skills
Daily, Weekly & Monthly Campaigner Routines17 skills
Agency Skills: Client Setup, Reporting & Management12 skills
B2C Campaign Skills: Launch, Ecommerce & Lead Generation19 skills
Frequently asked questions
Does Claude get search volume data for new keyword ideas?
Yes, through the Google Ads keyword planning tools exposed by MCP Ads. It reports the volume and competition ranges Google returns, and it says plainly when a term has no data rather than guessing.
Can these skills apply the bid changes automatically?
They can, but only after showing you the full list and getting a yes. Most agencies review the table first and approve it in one go; you can also ask Claude to skip writing changes and only produce the recommendations.
How does Claude decide between phrase and exact match for a negative?
The skills default to phrase match for single-theme junk terms and exact match when a word is only bad in one specific combination. Each proposed negative shows its match type so you can change it before anything is written.
Can it add the same negatives across all my client accounts?
With a manager account connected, the shared negative list builder creates one list and attaches it to the campaigns you choose. Updating that list later applies everywhere it is attached.