From messy export to clean list
Keyword research exports and brainstorms are full of noise: inconsistent capitals, doubled spaces, stray symbols, Google Ads match-type brackets, near-duplicates, and terms you never want to target. The cleaner normalises everything first and then removes duplicates, so “Word Counter”, “word counter!!” and “[word counter]” collapse into one entry.
Steps, in order
- Split on lines, tabs or semicolons.
- Strip match-type syntax:
[exact],"phrase",+modified,-negative. - Remove symbols (letters, numbers, apostrophes, ampersands, dots and hyphens are kept).
- Collapse whitespace and lowercase.
- Drop entries that are only numbers, too short or long by word count, or that contain any negative term you list (matched as whole words, so “free” doesn’t remove “freelance”).
- Remove duplicates and sort.
The notes under the result show how many keywords each rule removed. Pass the clean list to the Keyword Grouper to cluster it, or the Match Type Wrapper to format it for an ads platform.
Worked example
Here is what the Keyword List Cleaner returns for its built-in example. Settings used: Lowercase: on; Strip symbols: on; Strip match types ([ ] " +): on. Click Try an example in the tool above to load it, then change it as you like.
[Word Counter]
"word counter"
word counter!!
free word counter
Word Count Tool
word counter jobs
+character +counter
character counterword counter
free word counter
word count tool
word counter jobs
character counterQuestions
How do I remove duplicate keywords?
Paste the list; duplicates are removed after normalising case, spacing, symbols and match-type brackets.
How do negative terms work here?
Any keyword containing one of the listed words as a whole word is removed. Separate terms with commas.
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