Most negative keyword rules only look at the last 30 or 60 days. That sounds com
By Michael Erickson Facchin · November 3, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Most negative keyword rules only look at the last 30 or 60 days.
That sounds completely reasonable until you look at your long tail.
Take a search term like 'bottle with compass' on an insulated water bottle listing.
It gets 5 clicks a month and never converts.
In any 30-day window, it only has 5 clicks.
If your negative keyword rule waits for 20 clicks with zero orders in the last 30 days, that term slips past your filter every single month.
Over a year, it quietly eats 60 clicks and returns zero sales.
Multiply that across 150 slow-leaking search terms in an older account, and you are funding a permanent leak that never trips a 30-day alarm.
That is why a nightly negative keyword rule needs a long lookback window (up to 999 days, excluding the last 3 days for attribution):
-> IF Clicks >= 60
-> AND Orders = 0
-> OVER the last 999 days
-> Add as Negative Exact.
A 30-day window catches the obvious fires. A 999-day window catches the slow leaks.
How far back does your negative keyword lookback window go right now?