Mountain View, California — The Google AdWords blog today announced a new keyword match type for managing pay per click campaigns. The “Broad Modifier” allows you to define keywords that have more possibilities than phrase match but on the other hand is stricter than broad match. This new feature is currently being tested in the UK and Canada and it is named the broad match modifier.
If you have managed PPC campaigns on Google’s AdWords platform before, you should be familiar with the concept of exact, phrase and broad match. Although it is successful for many in attracting more clicks, targeting is often difficult.
How does it work? To apply the new variation, you need to add a plus symbol (+) directly in front of one or more words in a broad match keywords. The example provided by Google is, “the keyword formal +shoes will match the search “evening shoes,” but the keyword +formal +shoes will not.” Below is an image from Google that shows how the new keyword match type will work:
So applying this example you might pick out to do historic +hotel. This will mean that your advert will only appear where the word hotel is used and some variation of the historic hotel phrase. This might still mean that you appear for “classic hotel,” “traditional hotel” or “luxury hotel”. Close matches will include singular/plural forms, misspellings etc.
On the surface of things, the new “broad match modifier” will be rolled out in the UK and Canada today. These keywords will provide a halfway house between broad and phrase for those advertisers who are looking to achieve more ROI on Adwords without spending too much on budget by introducing multiple broad matches.
This added regulation over when your adverts are displayed should help you to receive more targeted clicks for your broad match campaigns on Google AdWords. Although you will still be prone to some slight odd interpretations, the risk of appearing for something wholly unrelated should be significantly reduced.
You should not discard adding keywords and negative keywords or optimizing your campaigns as a consequence of this update, but hopefully you will see an improvement in ROI. So if you are currently using broad match, you might want to consider looking at how this might improve your Click through Rate and PPC conversions.
To find out more about this test, see the Google Help center or visit the Google AdWords blog.