GOOGLE INTRODUCES NEW EXACT AND PHRASE MATCH KEYWORDS

Google has introduced a new feature in the Inside Adwords called “exact match and phrase match”. That is , an ‘exact match’ will include very close variants like misspellings, plurals / singulars, stemmings, accents and abbreviations.

Exact and phrase match keywords is a very progressive move by Google Adwords. This will produce highly relevant and engaging search results, in turn, resulting in high click through rate (CTR), high Quality Score, low cost per click prices (CPCs), low bounce rate, high conversion rate and higher return on investment.

“In mid-May, we’ll be improving our exact match and phrase match options to allow your ads to show for search terms that are close variants, which include misspellings, singular and plural forms, stemmings, acronyms, abbreviations, and accents. Learn more”

What will change?

According to Google, at least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling and the longer the query, the higher the rate. Even if the query is spelled correctly, there might be slight variations with regards to punctuations, for instance, in “user’s intent” and “users intent”, the users query is the same, but with slight variation.

Also, after the introduction of this feature, Google will correct spellings on its own. For example, if the user enters “marlyn monro” as his query, Google will automatically show organic listing for “Marilyn Monroe”.

This new feature will also limit the usage additional keywords using the broad modifier feature. The new matching behaviour does exactly the same. Adding more of negative exact and phrase keywords will also help if you have witnessed any poor performing or irrelevant search queries since its roll-out.

How will this improvement benefit marketers ?

With exact and phrase match, Google can easily manipulate the search words to trigger your ads. You can ensure your ads will only be shown on Google for highly-relevant potential customers.

If your campaign contained the exact match keyword ‘internet marketing basic now’, for example, you can be 100% sure your ad would only appear when someone searches for ‘internet marketing basic’ exactly.

Phrase match also gives you a high degree of control, and ensures that the words, in this case , ‘internet maketing basic now’ must be included somewhere in the user’s search phrase. You can therefore be 100% sure you will only receive traffic from searches which include the phrase ‘basics of internet marketing’, ‘internet marketing SEO’, ‘simple internet marketing startegy’ and so on.

In turn, this will also help in increasing relevancy, as your ads will serve the user more.

So, any possible impact?

Those advertisers who already have diverse keywords in their campaigns, will not be affected by this new matching behaviour unless they want to opt out of this change. Also if they opt to enable this feature, the advertisers might see an increase in CPCs, as their keywords can match with others.
But this feature will most certainly bring in more traffic.

But if the advertiser is already using exact and phrase match keywords in their campaign for potential audience, then it is obvious that they will get more traffic from those keywords, as opposed to traffic from broad matched keywords.

According to Google: “on average, the new matching behavior increased AdWords search clicks by 3%, with comparable CPCs”.

Google has made this feature optional. So, it is upto the advertisers to keep the matching keywords same for their campaigns or enable this option. The advertisers just need to log into AdWords and select the campaign settings tab. The keyword matching options will be found under “Advanced settings” .

Do let us know how this feature has affected you as an advertiser. For more findings, stay tuned !