Keywords

Keywords are single words or phrases that determine who your ad is served to.

On Yandex.Search, ads are served for search queries containing whole keywords that you specified. When serving ads on networks, the system automatically selects ads, the keywords of which match the subject matter of a site or the interests of a user.

  1. How it works
  2. How to add keywords

How it works

Keywords work differently in search results and in ad networks.

The keyword determines which search queries in Yandex search and on search sites in the Yandex Advertising Network will trigger ads from the group.

For example, if you set the keyword tours to mars, we will show your ads for the search queries tours to mars, discount tours to mars, tours to mars deals, reserve tours to mars and so on, but we won't show them for tours to the moon or is there life on mars.

When displaying ads, the system accounts for all forms of a word within the same part of speech, including singular and plural forms. For example, for the keyword tours mars, your ad will be shown if the user is looking for tour mars or tourS mars.

Ads are also displayed for searches that contain synonyms of your keyword. For example, the keyword inexpensive tours might serve ads for the search query cheap tours.

How to add keywords

You can add keywords in the New keywords box when creating or editing ads. Use commas to separate keywords. Only letters, numbers, the minus sign (“ - ”), and other Yandex.Direct operators are allowed. Letter case and word order are not important.

The maximum keyword length is 4096 characters (including negative keywords, spaces, and Yandex.Direct operators). The number of keywords per group cannot exceed 200. Each keyword can contain a maximum of 7 words.

Keywords are applied to the entire group of ads. To add keywords for a separate ad, create a new group for the ad.

If keywords overlap (a keyword contains one of the other keywords), negative keywords are added automatically. This prevents keywords from competing with each other when selecting an ad to show.

Any recurring words in a keyword are reduced to one instance. For example, the keyword Baden-Baden is reduced to just Baden. Ads will be shown for both the search terms Baden-Baden and Baden.

Auxiliary parts of speech, pronouns, and any words that do not add their own meaning (stop words) are automatically excluded from the user's search query when selecting ads to display. For example, if a user searches for how and when to travel to mars, ads will be served that have the keyword travel mars. How, and, when, and to are stop words in this case.