The three, side by side
| Match type | How it’s typed | Ads may show on searches that… | Reach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Broad | the keyword on its own, as tennis shoes | relate to the keyword, even when they don’t carry its literal meaning | The widest. It’s the default for every keyword. |
| Phrase | “tennis shoes”, in double quotation marks | carry the keyword’s meaning, stated or implied, including narrower versions of it | More than exact, fewer than broad |
| Exact | [red shoe], in square brackets | mean, or aim at, the same thing as the keyword | The narrowest, and the tightest control over who sees the ad |
The three nest like rings. Whatever exact match would catch, phrase match catches too; whatever phrase and exact would catch, broad catches, and then some.
What broad match looks at
Broad match reads beyond the keyword itself. Google says it can weigh what the person has searched for lately, what the landing pages and assets say, and the ad group’s other keywords, to judge what the advertiser means.
Google pairs it with automated bidding. Its help page calls Smart Bidding critical for broad match, on the reasoning that no two searches are alike, so each bid should respond to the conditions of that particular auction. Smart Bidding is in Bay 04.
Near-duplicates don’t compete with each other. Two broad match keywords that differ only in word order are treated as one: the stronger by Ad Rank goes forward, so the account still places a single bid. Google says doubling up like this does no harm to cost or results, though it advises against it.
How the search terms report labels a match
A keyword is what the advertiser puts in an ad group; a search term is what someone actually typed. The search terms report lists the searches that set off the ads and labels how closely each one matched. The label can be narrower than the keyword’s own setting, because a broad keyword can land on a search in a narrower way. Here is our own example for a broad match keyword, parking meters:
| Search term | Reported as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| parking meters | Exact match | The search is the keyword, word for word |
| old parking meters | Phrase match | The search contains the keyword |
| coin meters | Broad match | The search is a variation on the keyword |
Google suggests two uses for the report: turn irrelevant searches into negative keywords, and revisit match types.
Negative keywords: the fence around the bay
A negative keyword stops an ad showing on searches with that term in them. Google’s own illustration is an optometrist fencing out searches for wine glasses. Negatives come in the same three types, but they behave differently from the positive ones:
- Negative broad stops any search holding every one of its words, whatever the order.
- Negative phrase stops searches with its words in that order, extra words or not.
- Negative exact stops only that exact wording, with nothing added.
| Search | Negative broad | Negative phrase | Negative exact |
|---|---|---|---|
| parking fines | Blocked | Blocked | Blocked |
| fines parking | Blocked | Can show | Can show |
| council parking fines | Blocked | Blocked | Can show |
| parking fine | Can show | Can show | Can show |
| parking meters | Can show | Can show | Can show |
Notice “parking fine” slips through every time. Negatives ignore close variants, so Google says singulars, plurals and synonyms each need adding; capital letters and misspellings are handled for you.
Two edges of the fence
Pile on negatives and the ads may reach fewer customers. And a negative keyword that comes after the 16th word of a very long search may not block it.