Google Improves Control of PPC Exposure With Modified Broad Match
If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now
AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad. You also
know what they mean and how your keywords are matched to search
queries. Up until a couple of years ago, broad match meant that the
keywords in your phrase were matched to queries that had all of your words in any order.
Then, broad match became “expanded broad match” where Google’s
algorithm was given free reign to decide if search queries were a close
enough match in search intent to show your ad. Many of the results were
not even close. Your keyword could be business cards and your ad would show on state ids and business plans.
The overwhelming advantage of broad match of course is that you get
more impressions, clicks and conversions; although you most likely would
have a lower conversion rate that will make you pay more for each
conversion. So for some it works and for some not so much. The major
disadvantage is that you have to spend time going through your search
queries very often to weed out those that are not applicable to your
business because you paid for clicks state ids and business plans.
But now, Google has given us another option that offers more
flexibility in balancing the tension between traffic and relevance; the
old broad match and expanded broad match. It’s called modified broad match. This option has greater reach than phrase match, but is more controlled than broad match.
How? With this match type, if you put a plus (+) sign in front of a word in your phrase, AdWords will only match your keyword to search queries that contain that word exactly or contain a close variation of the word.
Google defines a close variation as “misspellings, singular/plural,
abbreviations/acronyms, stemming (like “floor” and “flooring”) and
synonyms. They say related searches like “flowers” and “tulips” are not
considered close variations.
So basically they are allowing advertisers to choose between the old
broad match, newer broad match, or a combination of the two. You can
choose to “bring in the reins” so to speak on broad match and decide
which words in keyword phrases are necessary in the search query for
their ad to be triggered. So, you could do this:
business +cards
This means card will not be matched with id or plan
but only cards exactly or close variations of it (card, etc.). Now,
this still means that you could get matched to id card; so if you want
to further filter your possible matches, you could go with:
+business +cards
This functions like the old school broad match. Now business will always mean business and cards will always mean cards.
This really takes the realistic number of possible match types up to 6 or 7. Here’s a really cool graph that shows the match types, their relative reach and an initial bidding strategy for each.
If you would like to test these match types out, choose a couple ad
groups where you are struggling, copy them and use the new ad groups to
replace your broad match keywords with modified broad match. Modify
your broad match keywords and set their bids between the your broad
match and phrase match keywords. Then, after enough data has collected
you can analyze search queries and conversions of each ad group to see
the results and adjust using your reports.
Mike Fleming specializes in Analytics and Paid Search for Pole Position Marketing, a leading search engine optimization and marketing firm helping businesses grow since 1998. You can follow Mike on Twitter at @SEMFlem. Mike enjoys playing, writing and recording music along with playing basketball to get his workout in. He resides in Canton, Ohio with a girl who threw a snowball at him one day…then married him.
Mike and the team at Pole Position are available to help clients expand their online presence and grow their businesses. Contact them via their site or by phone at 866-685-3374.
Great post!
This is going to save me a lot of time. My usual routine was broad keywords + search query report tool + negative keyword matches (see what i did there)
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