Russian and Ukrainian searches in the US: Cyrillic vs English demand

What it does

Many businesses that serve immigrant communities assume their audience searches in its native language. They build a Russian-language Search campaign and then wonder why it barely gets impressions. In practice people who speak Russian or Ukrainian at home often type queries in English, especially for jobs, licenses, insurance and services whose official names are English. Some write Russian words in Latin letters, and only part of them switch the phone keyboard to Cyrillic. Before writing ads in Russian, it pays to know how many searches in your area really happen in Cyrillic.

The common mistake is to switch the language in Keyword Planner to Russian and expect the numbers to show Russian-speaking demand. Search volume is tied to the words themselves and to the location. In our own live check in October 2026 the numbers followed the words and the region, not the language setting: an English query such as truck driver jobs does not turn into Russian demand because another language is selected, and it says nothing about who typed it. To measure Cyrillic demand you need Cyrillic keywords: real Russian and Ukrainian phrasings, including colloquial ones and frequent misspellings, estimated for the same locations as the English list.

In that same check, for truck-driver keywords in the US, Latin-script searches were in the thousands per month while Cyrillic searches were in the tens. Do not copy these numbers into your plan; measure your own words and regions. Note that transliteration, Russian words typed in Latin letters, lands on the Latin side of such a split, so look at it separately if it matters to you. Mixed queries exist too, for example an English job title with a Russian word or a city name written in Cyrillic, and they belong in the list so the picture is complete.

What the split means for campaign choice. If Cyrillic volume is small, a separate Russian Search campaign will spend little and learn slowly; it is often wiser to keep English Search keywords and make the landing page and follow-up comfortable for Russian speakers, for example with a language switch. To reach people by language rather than by query, use formats that target an audience: Meta ad sets with a language setting, or Demand Gen with ad group languages and audiences of people who searched specific terms. If Cyrillic volume is meaningful, give it its own ad group or campaign with Russian ads, so its costs and leads stay visible on their own.

AdAce Ads builds this split for you in “Analytics” → “Demand”. Enter English and Cyrillic keywords together: the service gets monthly searches from Google Keyword Planner and shows Latin-script and Cyrillic keywords as two groups, optionally broken down by US state for up to 10 states. Keyword ideas arrive for each language you choose, with competition and the top-of-page bid range, which helps find Cyrillic phrasings you had not thought of. Nothing is written to the ad account. After launch, the lead tracking script records the page language of each lead, and cost per interview and per hire is shown by candidate language, so the estimate can be compared with real results.

Why it helps

• Know the real size of Cyrillic search demand before writing Russian ads.
• Avoid the language-setting trap in Keyword Planner.
• Compare Latin-script and Cyrillic volume state by state.
• Choose between Search, Demand Gen and Meta with numbers, not assumptions.

How to set it up

1. Go to “Analytics” → “Demand” for the client you are planning for.
2. Enter English keywords together with their real Russian and Ukrainian equivalents in Cyrillic.
3. Optionally pick up to 10 US states to compare.
4. Compare the Latin-script and Cyrillic totals and review keyword ideas for each language.
5. Decide: a separate Cyrillic ad group if the volume is meaningful, otherwise audience-based formats.

Good to know