Three negative keyword lists every bridging account needs
The exclusions that quietly halve wasted spend on UK bridging search campaigns.
Most of the waste in a UK bridging Google Ads account is not in the bidding or the creative. It is in the searches you are accidentally appearing for. Three negative keyword lists, applied account-wide, cut wasted spend on the average bridging account we audited in 2024 by roughly half. None of them are clever. All of them get missed.
List one: consumer credit overlap
Everything that signals consumer credit intent rather than property finance. 'Payday', 'no credit check', 'bad credit', 'guaranteed approval', 'instant decision', 'cash advance', and roughly forty variants. These terms overlap with 'bridging' and 'short term loan' enough that Google will happily show your ad against them.
A bridging account without this exclusion list typically has 15-25% of its impressions going to entirely the wrong intent.
List two: educational and informational
'What is', 'how does', 'guide to', 'explained', 'definition', 'meaning'. These searches are people doing research, not people looking for a broker. They convert at near-zero and they cost the same per click as commercial intent.
Exception: if you have a strong content play and you're optimising for newsletter signups rather than booked calls, leave these in. For a calendar-booking objective, exclude them all.
List three: lender brand terms
Every UK bridging lender you do not want to be conquesting against. United Trust Bank, Together, Octane, MT Finance, Precise, and the long tail of specialist lenders. The conquesting strategy that was viable in 2022 was, by mid-2024, mostly funding the competition's brand recognition.
Unless you have a specific tactical reason to bid on a competitor name, exclude them all. The clicks are expensive, the conversion rate is poor, and you are training Google to associate your campaign with the wrong intent.
Negative keyword discipline is the least interesting work on a Google Ads account and one of the highest-leverage. The three lists above took maybe two hours to build properly and saved every account we put them on more than they cost in setup time within the first month. Nobody talks about this work because there is nothing to demo. It still matters.
Capital Edge publishes one note a month on UK bridging finance, paid acquisition, and AI-led outbound. Written for brokers, by the team running the playbook.