What is a ‘negative keyword’ in Google AdWords?

Question: Can Jason repeat the mechanism by which he eliminated Boston from his AdWords PPC program? That was cool, but went too fast for me. (I guess I can try to catch it on the recorded version.)

Question: We can look at rank for a specific website TODAY; Is there a way to look at historic rank? (Without having done the search previously, and recording it in the spreadsheet.)

Answer: Negative keywords are VERY important in AdWords. You add them on the KEYWORDS tab, at the VERY VERY BOTTOM. What do they do? If the negative keyword is entered (for instance: ‘BOSTON’ vs. ‘SEO TRAINING’), then your ad does NOT show. Think of them as STOP words. There are two basic kinds: A) words for which you are ALREADY showing up on ORGANIC, I.e., PAGE 1, and b) words that indicate a searcher has no money, no interest. FREE is a common NEGATIVE word, since it indicates that they are unlikely to spend money.

As for your second question, no there is no way to go back in time to measure one’s rank on Google (SERP rank). That why on any project I always keep a historical record of where we were on day 1, and then progressively as we work on the SEO, as people forget how far we’ve come!