Twitter announced several updates to its promoted tweets feature on Thursday, allowing brands and marketers to improve the accuracy of their targeting and to make promoted tweets more relevant in searches. Twitter started experimenting with promoted tweets back in 2010, and they will be a crucial product in the company’s focus on monetization.

“Every day, millions of people use Twitter search to understand what’s happening in real time. Search is also where we debuted the very first Promoted Tweets back in April 2010, and it remains a great way to reach a relevant audience with your content,” the company wrote in a blog post.

Among the changes that Twitter outlined in a blog post Thursday:

• The launch of negative keyword targeting will allow brands to note which words they do not want associated with their tweets. Twitter used the example of a bacon company trying to…