Google Ads Match Changes –

New changes to Google Ads matches

As you all know, Google is a platform that is constantly changing and one of its most recent updates is the changes in keyword matches, which we must take into account when creating and managing our SEM campaigns.

Google has been undergoing changes for some time in what until now was the keyword match that we had the most control over, the exact match, making it less and less exact and making searches more and more open. With this we lose more control when we want our ads to be displayed.

The beginning of the end of exact match began in 2014 when they allowed plurals, misspellings, and other variants to appear in some various combinations of the ad. In 2017 they decided that in order not to spend so much time building keyword lists, the best idea was to include in the exact match an extension of the so-called “light variants”, that is, allowing to ignore, add or change propositions, conjunctions, articles and other words that will not affect the intent of a search. Lastly, it was in 2018 that implicit words and paraphrases were allowed to be included in exact match variants, that is, searches with the same meaning, but with different semantic structure.

Why has Google made this change to exact match?

According to Google, these changes have been made because 15% of the daily searches that users make are new, therefore, advertisers would be missing out on new queries if the match was so controlled. The negative part is that with this modification, we are exposed to an increase in cost, since there will be a higher percentage of the number of clicks on the exact matches, which were not occurring otherwise.

Modified broad and phrase match changes

On the other hand, there are going to be changes in the coming weeks regarding phrase matches and broad modifiers.

The modified broad match It already allowed searches with different word order and even the use of singulars, plurals, abbreviations, stemmings and accents, and now it will accept searches with the same meaning.

Refering to phrase matchit will still respect the same word order, but will also accept searches with similar meanings.

What will these changes cause?

• First, Google expects that advertisers using phrase matches and modified broad matches will experience a 3% to 4% increase in clicks and conversions about those keywords. This will cause both a cost increasesince the search volume will increase.
• Second, Google is making a change to its keyword targeting preferences. Now, searches that match a modified or exact broad match keyword in our account will not match another for not compete with each other.
• On the other hand, our work keyword negativization will increase since it will have to be done in such a way that all the campaigns are perfectly optimized and prevent unwanted traffic from entering.
• Lastly, these concordance changes could affect search campaign structures and quality scores since the user will not be able to find what they are specifically looking for in the ads.

This is certainly a bit of a controversial development as it directly affects the control advertisers have over their keywords and the search queries that trigger them. What do you think about these new changes?