Ads Match Types: Effective Use of Keyword Match Types in PPC Campaigns

You don’t have to be in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising for long to understand the importance of keyword match types.

In this article, we’ll explain what keyword match types are, how they differ, and most importantly, we’ll show you how to use the different Ads match types to improve your PPC campaign.

What are Google Ads Match types?

In Google Ads, keyword match types are parameters that you set on your keywords, which determine how your PPC ads are triggered. These parameters tell Google Ads how precisely the user search query must match your keyword. As such, Ads match types offer advertisers varying levels of control over their keywords and PPC ads.

In Google Ads, there are four keyword match types to consider:

• Broad Match
• Modified Broad Match
• Phrase Match
• Exact Match

Let’s explore each one in more detail.

Broad Match Type

Broad Match Type keywords will display your ad more often than any other match type, as your ads will trigger for plurals and variations of your chosen keywords. It is the default setting and ensures you will maximize impressions, albeit from a broad audience.

For instance, if you bid on the keyword “men watch”, and use Broad Match Type, then your ad will appear when a user enters vaguely related search queries, such as “watch” or “watch for man”.

Your ad will also be displayed for many variants, including synonyms, misspellings, and stemming.

The Pros and Cons of Broad Match Type

• Pros: Brand awareness — Your ad will get more impressions.
• Cons: Wasted spend — As you get more clicks from unqualified users, you will accrue Wasted Spend on clicks that will never convert.
• Cons: Damaged Quality Score — Over time, a lot of irrelevant clicks can impact your Quality Score, and Google Ads will start placing your ads lower in search engine results pages (SERPs).

Why You Should Use Broad Match

If you have a large business with a lot of general products, you may benefit from using Broad Match types. For example, users who search “kitchen appliances” may arrive on your site that sells dishwashers, microwaves, and blenders. This traffic may result in sales, even if it wasn’t the precise solution the user was looking for initially.

That being said, it’s usually best to aim for quality over quantity in PPC advertising. Broad Match Type keywords are useful when you are getting started with a PPC campaign, as it helps you figure out what works for your business.

However, down the line, you should try to narrow your targeting. Niche markets require more of a laser focus, which isn’t a good fit for this match type.

Modified Broad Match Type

Modified Match Type keywords are a customizable version of Broad Match Type keywords. You can exercise more control over these by adding the + sign to your keyword.

Let’s take our earlier example of the term, “men watch”, but this time we will apply a Modified Broad Match Type.

To do this, we enter “(+) Men (+) Watch” as the keyword.

Now, the user search query will need to have these two individual words present to trigger your ad. Note that the ad will display for “men’s watch” as it is a misspelling of the original keyword.

Pros and Cons of Modified Broad Match

• Pros: Flexibility — Advertisers have a choice on what terms to add the modifier, which allows you more control about how to filter your traffic.
• Pros: Increased traffic relevancy — The modifier (+) helps refine your traffic, ensuring that Broad Match keywords attract more qualified users, who are ultimately more likely to engage in what you have to offer.
• Pros: Reduce time spent on negative keywords — Using negative keywords to filter out irrelevant clicks is a great tool, but it can be an exhaustive process with Broad Match types. By opting for a Modified Broad Match, you can save a lot of time.
• Cons: Less impression volume — By excluding related searches and synonyms, Modified Broad Match types reduce your traffic and subsequent impressions.
• Cons: MS Excel formatting issues — This may not be a big problem for everyone, but if you are moving these keyword match types into an Excel document, it can cause some formatting issues. You must be mindful of this in case it impacts the accuracy of your keywords.

Why You Should Use Modified Broad Match Type

Modified Broad Match Type keywords are a solid choice when you are watching your budget, as you can attract more targeted traffic, and reduce your wasted spend. While you’ll get less impression share, the traffic quality will be much better than if you use Broad Match.

Phrase Match Type

Phrase Match Type keywords trigger your ads when the user search query matches the exact sequence of keywords in your campaign. However, there can be additional words in the query, before or after your keyword phrase.

For example, your keyword may be “suede shoes”. Your ad will trigger for the search query, “blue suede shoes”, or “blue suede shoes for men”.

Pros and Cons of Phrase Match Type

• Pros: Higher conversion rate — Phrase Match Types narrow the focus of your campaign, cutting out irrelevant traffic to attract more qualified users. This will boost your clickthrough rate (CTR), and eventually, increase conversions.
• Pros: Reduce wasted spend — As the traffic is more qualified, you won’t waste as much money on irrelevant clicks.
• Cons: More expensive keyword bids — You will bid more on these terms as they offer more control and a better return on investment (ROI).
• Cons: Harder to Optimize — As you are focusing on a smaller, more niche group of users, it will be a challenge to optimize your ad copy and landing pages for maximum impact.

Why You Should Use Phrase match

If you’re running a highly-targeted campaign that is focused on a small audience, Phrase Match is one of the best keyword match types to use. You can create ad copy and specific offers tailored to this user group, which can help you create a more effective PPC campaign.

However, this match type is not as beneficial for brand awareness, as it has a limited reach.

Exact Match Type

Exact Match Type keywords trigger your ads when the user search query exactly matches the keyword you have bid on in your campaign, or if the user enters a close variant.

For example, your keyword “men’s dress shirt” will trigger for the query, “men dress shirt”.

Pros and Cons of Exact Match Type

• Pros: Minimize wasted spend — You don’t need to worry about draining your budget with this match type.
• Pros: Highly-qualified traffic — Virtually every click you get has the potential to become a new lead or customer.
• Cons: Limited reach — You will miss out on a lot of quality traffic because your keyword control is too stringent.
• Cons: Low keyword discovery opportunity — Consumer interests and search patterns change. With too much focus on certain keywords, you leave little room for discovering new, related search queries.

Why You Should Use Exact Match Type

It’s okay to use some Exact Match keywords in your campaign, just as a budget-saver. However, you shouldn’t spend too much on them as they limit your reach and potential for attracting a lot of traffic.

Strike a Balance with Your Keyword Match Types

You should seek to find a healthy balance between reach and relevance with your Ads match types.

By using cascading bids, you can make higher bids on Exact Match Type keywords, and lower bids on Broad Match Type keywords, and then invest most of your focus and budget on mid-tier bids for Phrase Match and Modified Broad Match keywords, as they will garner the best results.

PPCexpo Reporting tools have built-in analysis for Modified Broad Match type keywords, which is a unique tool that Google Ads doesn’t offer by default. Check out our tools to drill down in match type data and get actionable insights you can use to optimize your PPC campaigns.