To help you reach more potential customers, your ads will now show on content that matches any of the topics, placements, or Display/Video/Search keywords you target. For example, if you targeted “bikes” as a topic and “cycling” as a Display/Video/Search keyword, your ads will show on content that matches either.
You’ll also notice contextual targeting simplified into a single page in Google Ads, so you can manage all content targeting types (Topics, Placements, Display/Video keywords, and Exclusions) in a single view. The new page can be found in the “Content” section under Campaigns on the left-side navigation menu.
Just as you can target placements in the Google Display Network and YouTube to show your ads (like specific pages, sites, and videos) you can also exclude placements where you don't want your ads to show. In particular, you might exclude websites or domains that aren’t appropriate for your brand.
This article explains how to create account-level placement exclusions to prevent your ads from showing on certain placements on the Display Network, YouTube, or the Search Partner Network, overriding any campaign-level placement targeting.
Before you begin
Here's critical information to know about account-level exclusions:
Subdomains
When you create a placement exclusion, leave off www. to exclude the subdomains, subsites, and subpages under the exclusions. So, if you exclude example.com, you will automatically exclude store.example.com (subdomain), example.com/store (subsite), and example.com/store.html (subpage). But if you retain the www. and exclude www.example.com, the exclusion won't extend to all subdomains, subsites, and subpages. Placement Exclusions for subdomains, subsites and subpages do not work on the Search Partner Network.
Country domains
Different country domains need separate exclusions. For example, to exclude example.com and example.co.uk, you need to add both as placement exclusions.
Limits
You can enter a maximum of 20,000 placement exclusions at a time and a total of 65,000 placement exclusions per account. Manager accounts can create up to 3 placement exclusion lists with a maximum of 250,000 exclusions per list.
Note: Any URL associated with a Google domain (for example, youtube.com and mail.google.com) can't be added as placement exclusions.
Instructions
- In your Google Ads account, click the Tools icon
.
- Click the Shared library drop down in the section menu.
- Click Exclusion lists.
- At the top, click Placement exclusion list.
- Click the plus button
.
- Click + New list.
- Enter the URL or search for the content you’d like to prevent your ads from showing on (don’t include “www.”). If you have a list of URLs, you can also click "Enter multiple placements" and paste the entire list there.
- Click Save.
You'll be able to verify the placement exclusion under "Change history" when you view changes at the account level. New placement exclusions typically take effect within 12 hours.
