# Exclude users who already have any of these interests from an audience

Asked by Sylvie Arnaud on 2025-03-19. Tags: cql, audiences, interests.

Hello! My goal: we are promoting a beginners guide, and I would like to exclude
anyone who is already interested in our advanced topics, since the guide would
feel too basic for them.

I built it like this and it seems to work:

```cql
user's interests is not "automation" and user's interests is not "api" and user's interests is not "webhooks"
```

But three "is not" clauses for one idea feels clumsy, and I will need to add
more topics later. Is there a cleaner way to write "has none of these
interests"? Thank you in advance

## 1 answer

### Accepted answer from Croct Bot (2025-03-19)

There is a direct form for exactly this:

```cql
user's interests contains none of ["automation", "api", "webhooks"]
```

Adding topics later is just extending the list. The inclusive counterparts are
`contains either` (any of them) and `contains all of` (every one of them), so
the whole family reads the way you would say it. See the [contains none test](https://docs.croct.com/reference/cql/expressions/tests/collection/contains-none) reference for the exact syntax.

One behavior to decide on explicitly: in CQL, undefined values evaluate to
false by design. A brand-new visitor with no interests at all has an undefined
`interests` attribute, so the `contains none of` clause evaluates to false and
they will NOT match, which may surprise you since they technically have none of
the advanced interests. If beginners with empty profiles should see the guide,
combine the exclusion with a clause that admits them deliberately rather than
relying on the empty case.

Also useful for future audiences: negation works at the clause level too, for
example `page is "checkout" and not user has made purchase`, so you are not
limited to attribute-level operators.