Negative words

Negative keywords are words and phrases added to a campaign or ad group that, if present in the user’s request, will not be shown. A standard tool for managing relevance in Yandex Direct and Google Ads.

In my practice, negative keywords are the first place to start diagnosing a high CPL. Typical situation: a campaign wastes its budget on “free”, “do-it-yourself”, “reviews”, “download” - because the backing track was set up only at launch and no one reviewed it for six months. I regularly upload search queries from campaigns once every 2 weeks and add new minuses through Direct Commander.

Negative keyword formats in Direct: without operator (broad match), in “quotes” (phrase), in [square brackets] (exact). The distinction is important: broad minus all word forms, precise minus only a specific phrase. For highly competitive campaigns with a budget of 200,000+ ₽/month, I use a library of negative keywords for 2,000–3,000 phrases, which I have accumulated for several years.

Negative keywords are not just about budget savings. This is an audience management tool: by omitting “competitors”, “alternative”, “vs”, you cut off people at the comparative stage and do not spend money if you are not ready for a direct competitive comparison.