What are negative keywords and which ones should a Pakistani business add?

A keyword tells Google which searches you want; a negative keyword tells it which ones to skip. They matter more in Pakistan than people expect because a lot of search traffic is informational or job-related. Someone typing 'interior designer salary Islamabad' or 'interior design course Rawalpindi' will happily click an interior design firm's ad and never become a client.

A sensible starter list for a service business covers a few families of words. Jobs and careers: job, jobs, vacancy, salary, hiring, internship. Learning: course, training, PDF, book, tutorial, 'how to', and the Roman Urdu 'kaise'. Free and cheap-seeking: free, sasta, used, second hand, if you do not sell those. Other cities: Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar, Multan, Faisalabad, if you only serve the twin cities. And competitor or brand names you are not entitled to target.

Do not copy a list blindly, though. 'Used' is a negative for a furniture showroom but the whole business for a used-car dealer. 'Course' is a negative for a clinic but the main keyword for an academy in Saddar. Build the list for your own trade, and be careful with very short negatives on broad match because they can block good searches by accident.

After launch, open the search terms report at least weekly for the first month. Every irrelevant search you find becomes a new negative. Apply shared lists at account level for things that are always wrong, such as jobs, and campaign-level negatives for things that are wrong in only one campaign. Over a few weeks this housekeeping usually does more for cost per enquiry than any bid change.