Keywords decide what you see. Exclusions decide what you stop seeing.
Almost every complaint about Marketplace alert tools reduces to the same thing: the alerts were not worth opening, so the person muted them.
That is nearly always an exclusion problem rather than a keyword problem. Keywords are easy — you already know you want a PS5. The hard part is that accessory sellers, parts sellers, and other buyers all legitimately use the word "PS5" in their titles, and no amount of keyword tuning separates them.
Exclusion words are the highest-leverage part of a saved search: each one removes a whole class of listing at once, where adding or tweaking keywords only changes which listings match in the first place.
The four kinds of listing that waste your time
Every noisy feed is some mix of these four. Naming them is what an exclusion list does.
Accessories using the product's name. Controllers, chargers, cases, batteries, bags, skins. The seller is being accurate — the listing really is about a PS5 accessory — which is exactly why keyword matching cannot help. Look for "only" phrasing: sellers say "controller only" and "battery only" because they are trying to be clear.
Parts and broken units. "For parts", "as is", "not working", "untested". Sometimes these are the deal, if you repair. Usually they are a wasted drive, and the seller has told you so.
Other buyers, not sellers. "ISO", "looking for", "wanted". Posts from people hunting the same thing you are. They match your keywords perfectly and are of no use at all.
Replicas and misrepresented goods. Mostly an apparel and sneaker problem, where a meaningful share of listings say "rep" or "inspired" outright. Excluding those words removes the honest ones; the dishonest ones still need your own inspection in person.
The twelve that work everywhere
Add these to essentially any watchlist where you want working items you can buy outright:
broken, parts, repair, for parts, as is, not working, cracked, iso, looking for, wanted, lease, rent
Three groups, three problems: condition words remove things that do not work, wanted-post words remove other buyers, and rental words remove listings that were never a sale. If you repair and resell, drop the condition words — for you those listings are the inventory.
Copy-ready lists
The free negative keyword generator produces these plus category-specific words from whatever you type, and explains why each group is there. Nothing is sent anywhere — it runs in your browser.
Category lists worth starting from
These are the exclusion sets that do the most work per word in each category. They are starting points, not rules — your local market will have its own noise.
| Category | Exclude | What it removes |
|---|---|---|
| Game consoles | controller only, case only, skin, no console, games only | Accessory listings titled with the console name |
| GPUs and gaming PCs | mining, artifacts, no display, laptop, prebuilt office | Ex-mining cards, dead boards, laptops sharing model numbers |
| Power tools | battery only, charger only, bag only, empty case, bare tool | Accessories and empty containers under the brand name |
| Sneakers and apparel | replica, rep, fake, inspired, kids size | Self-declared replicas and youth sizing |
| Furniture | particle board, mdf, pet stain, smoke, curbside | Flat-pack material and damage you cannot see in photos |
| Appliances | not cooling, leaks, needs repair, scratch dent | Faults disclosed in the description, and retail liquidation |
| Bikes and outdoor | kids, bent frame, rusted, no wheels, frame only | Children's frames and structural damage |
| Phones and laptops | icloud locked, activation lock, bad esn, blacklisted | Devices that cannot be legitimately resold |
Build the last ten percent from your own feed
Generic lists get you most of the way. The rest is specific to your market and there is a reliable method for finding it.
After a watchlist has run for a week, look at the alerts you skipped rather than the ones you opened. Find the word they have in common — it is usually a single word and usually obvious once you look for it — and add it. Repeat twice.
This beats any generic list because your area has its own noise: a local chain whose stock keeps appearing, a particular scam listing that reappears weekly, a regional phrase. No generator knows about those, and two rounds of this is normally the difference between a feed you avoid and one you clear standing up.
Where exclusions can cost you
Worth being even-handed about this, because an over-aggressive list is a quieter failure than a noisy feed — you never see what it removed.
"No box" is only a problem if boxes matter to your buyers. For hyped sneakers they carry real value; for workwear and outdoor gear they are irrelevant.
"As is" occasionally sits on a listing from a seller being cautious rather than one hiding a fault. If you buy in a category where sellers are typically non-technical, this one is worth testing without.
Brand exclusions age. A brand you dismissed two years ago may have a resale market now.
Anything you added in a batch. If alerts dropped off sharply right after an exclusion session, remove the most recent additions first and re-add them one at a time.
The order to do this in
- Start with the twelve universal words.
- Add your category's list from the table above.
- Run it for a week without touching it.
- Look at what you skipped, and add the two or three words those listings share.
- Re-check every few months — model names age and new junk patterns appear.
That is the whole method. The searches worth having are not the ones that were configured cleverly on day one; they are the ones that got five minutes of attention three times.