Google Search Keyword Match Types
Keywords on Google are tricky business and millions are lost from advertisers every month. Picture this example to understand why inexperienced advertisers blow up their PPC budget and don’t get any results from Adwords.
Example: -
Suppose you are an App Developer & you run your Adwords campaign with keywords like App Developers in Dubai - (This is a broad match keyword - as google treats keywords as the default unless you specify them)
Myth:
You assume that Google will show your ads on top whenever someone types the keyword App Developer in Dubai.
Fact:
The keywords you bid for are not the actual keywords your ads get shown for. Instead, it is the search queries for what ads are shown. So Google matches your keywords with the most relevant search queries. This relevancy is picked up arithmetically.
So a keyword like an app developer in Dubai can be shown for system-generated relevant keywords like ( read wasted clicks)
- App games
- Top apps in Dubai
- App tutorials
- Developer jobs
- Top apps in Dubai
So you see the variations? If you don’t monitor your click spend you’re wasting click cost right this minute! Fortunately, there is a way around it. Negative keywords. Negative keywords avoid showing your ads for those selected keywords when a user types in a search. Negative keywords in the above examples will be (-tutorials, -jobs ). I usually add lots of negative keywords to avoid wrong clicks and get right clicks.
There is another way to get optimize your keywords list. Broad modifier. Which is add + before any keyword. This means Google will show your ads only when that keyword is in the search queries. so +App +Developers in Dubai can show any ad variations as long as the app & developers are in it.
See your search terms report under the keywords tab - click details and you will see the actual queries for which you’re getting clicks. Add relevant ones and make other queries as negatives. Add exact, phrase match types and try to avoid broad match or single-word keywords. they are the best money wasters.
| Match type | Special symbol | Example keyword | Ads may show on searches that | Example searches |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Broad match | none | women’s hats | include misspellings, synonyms, related searches, and other relevant variations | buy ladies hats |
| Broad match modifier | +keyword | +women’s +hats | contain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms), in any order | woman’s hats |
| Phrase match | “keyword” | “women’s hats” | are a phrase, and close variations of that phrase | buy women’s hats |
| Exact match | [keyword] | [women’s hats] | are an exact term and close variations of that exact term | women’s hats |
| Negative match | -keyword | -women | are searches without the term | baseball hats |
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