Adding keywords is the fun part. The money is in the subtractions.
A negative keyword is a search you refuse to pay for. It costs nothing to add, takes effect immediately, and is the only optimisation in Apple Search Ads that cannot backfire when done carefully — you are not guessing at a bid, you are declining traffic you already know is wrong.
It is also the one most accounts never touch, because nothing goes visibly wrong without it. The spend just drifts.
This is the big one and it is structural. If "uv index" is an exact-match keyword in one campaign and your Search Match campaign is free to match it too, both campaigns enter the same auction. You are bidding against yourself, and the only party who benefits is Apple.
Every term you add to a keyword campaign should be added as a negative in Search Match, in the same move. The two campaigns are meant to feed each other, not compete.
Search Match is behavioural and market-wide, so it drags in things that share a word and nothing else. Seeding "uv" for a sun-safety app can return searches for a Spanish university whose initials are UV. Those taps are not mispriced; they are people looking for something you do not sell.
Somebody typing "free habit tracker" has stated their budget. If your app is paid with no free mode, that tap converts poorly and predictably. If you do have a free tier, the same search is one of the best you can buy — which is why this one is yours to decide rather than a rule.
Resist blocking a search because one tap did not install. One tap is not evidence. A search term with thirty taps and nothing to show has earned its place on the list; a search term with three has told you nothing, and blocking it is how accounts slowly strangle their own reach.
A negative can be exact, which blocks only that phrase as typed, or broad, which blocks anything containing those words.
Broad negatives are powerful and easy to regret. Blocking "free" broadly also blocks "free up storage" and "freehand drawing". Use exact for anything that is a real search somebody might make for your app, and save broad for words that could never be right — a rival's brand, a category you are not in.
Read your search terms report weekly. Sort by spend. Everything at the top with no installs and no plausible reason to convert is a candidate, and everything you have graduated into a keyword campaign since last week belongs in Search Match's negative list.
It takes ten minutes and it is the highest-return ten minutes in the account — which is precisely why it is the first thing that stops happening once the novelty wears off.
Searches you tell Apple not to show your ad for. They cost nothing, apply immediately, and are the safest change you can make, because you are declining traffic you already know is wrong rather than guessing at a bid.
Apple allows 5,000 per ad group. Most accounts never come close, but the limit is real and a bulk add that crosses it fails as a whole rather than partly.
Yes, every one of them. Otherwise both campaigns enter the same auction for the same search and you bid against yourself. Add the negative in the same move as the keyword, or the list drifts out of step.
Exact for anything that could be a real search for your app, because broad negatives block more than they look like they will — blocking "free" broadly also blocks "free up storage". Save broad for words that could never be right, like a rival brand name.