I've been testing some broad phrase matches and It seems that it doesn't work exactly as stated on adwords description.

I have a keyword lets say
Blue Cars as a broad phrase

When I type "Big Blue Cars" into google's search
I don't see my Ad up.

How ever if I search for "buy blue cars" my ad shows up.

I was led to believe that if I have "Blue Cars" as a broad match my Ad should show for search phrases such as "Blue Sedan Cars" "Cars Blue Buy" and "Small Blue Cars".

Now my site does deal mostly with buying things and it might be a relevancy issue with the term "Big Blue Cars" but you can argue that having my Ad not show up for Big Blue Cars isn't necessarily a good thing.

-Jun

First off, I would avoid Broad Match like a sick Asian Chicken holding hands with an Ebola Monkey (I want to include Mariah Carey into the metaphor...but I dont know how)

Google wants you to use Broad Match so your impressions go up, your CTR goes down and then you get booted out "UNLESS" you up your minimum bid rate.

Switch everything to either phrase or [Exact] match... build out your ads to include plurals, use dynamic keyword placement to place the keyword right into the ad... stager the placements from Headline copy to body copy (character limits apply)

The time you put into gathering the best selection of keywords put into Exact or Phrase matches will pay dividends

Remember CTR in Google ad words is a MAJOR factor in ranking against your competition... The higher your CTR... the higer your average placement... higher the placement... more clicks

Good Luck to you

Im aware that broad match lowers CTR,
However we are limited in the amount of time dedicated to building keywords
We have about 100,000 products and growing and only two people building about 100-200 products per day.

If we eliminated broad match and converted everything to phrase match we would need to edit and create 500,000 new keywords

Broad match places your ad in spots that unqualify the visitor ... hence you get significantly more (and inflated) impressions ... with more impressions / less clicks ... lower the CTR

If you have that many items to distribute you should be using dynamic keyword placement and placing the products right into the ad

as long as you have your items layed out by character limits you could easily manage 100's of products through 3-5 different ads

Need a{KeyWord:Kick in the Head}
Then become a Canuck Fan
Loosers click here
www.canucks.com

You would swap out the keywords within the ad
This would give you the ability to swap out hundreds of products within limited ads, reducing your ad groups and limiting your time pulling data on your campaigns.


Get someone who know Excel to get going on this and you will save major time and money

Good Luck

Hi Vipjun

A nice way to make broad match work is to add negative words to ad groups or campaigns....

ex... if you sell blue cars / black cars only

negative out all the other colors in the spectrum. I would use the keyword suggestion tool on my broad matched term and add a negative to anything that comes up that does not relate to my products.

Definitely, definitely work w/ the spreadsheets... they're so much easier to work with.

Actually you should break campaigns down to broad match & specific match.

Also be aware broad match means that in a very very broad sense.

For example I have a client who sells roses and was targeting the term 'engagement roses' and his ads then were displayed for terms such as 'engagement gifts' (broad match again) and 'engagement rings' (broad match at work) both these ads were clicked.

My client does not sell engagement gifts other than the roses and no engagement rings whatsoever.

I could negate 50 'engagement' keywords wasting my clients time and make myself richer (unethically) or I can just dump them into exact match campaigns from set up and save time and money.

My two cents.

It is possible your ad is not appearing because it has been dropped for that particular broad term due to low CTR as has been mentioned. Unfortunately you are not told about this until all major broad matches are dropped and you are prompted to raise your bid to get included.

The other possibility is it is really far down the list... have you looked at all listings for the term?

After speaking with the the google and msn rep they said pretty much the same thing, low ctr = your Ad not being shown for other broad matches

Basically you should treat your broad matches more like exact matches
just that the order of your keywords are not important

example big yellow bus on broad match
will only gaurantee you exposure to
big yellow bus
yellow big bus
bus yellow big etc

don't depend on any of the search engines to include extra keywords
So far my experience is that overture has the broadest match followed by msn and google being the strictest.

Which gives me an idea to write an article about fine tuneing the broad match feature.

vipjun

broad match means the search engines will include extra terms

yellow bus
bus wheels
bus passengers
bus schedules
bus maintainence
bus strike

yellow wheels
yellow strike
yellow moon

big wheels
big strike
big sky
big deal

etc etc etc.

The term to worry of is not click fraud

It's "click waste"

My two cents

vipjun

broad match means the search engines will include extra terms

yellow bus
bus wheels
bus passengers
bus schedules
bus maintainence
bus strike

yellow wheels
yellow strike
yellow moon

big wheels
big strike
big sky
big deal

etc etc etc.

The term to worry of is not click fraud

It's "click waste"

My two cents

Im pretty sure that is Expanded Match which is a not all that broadmatch is intended to do. But you did bring up a good point that I didn't mention.

The reason for me posting this thread is because I was getting left out of some longer search terms.

Example if my broad term was yellow bus and some searched
How to find a yellow bus
and my ad didn't show up.

My usage of Broad Match was not about fine tuning ROI or click tru rates
instead it was to find out what my audience was searching for.

vipjun

I do not know what you are refering to but I will list the three match types per Google.

https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6324&query=match+types&topic=0&type=f

Broad Match

Phrase Match

Exact Match

I see no 'expanded match' in Google, and if there were such a creature it would have the same meaning as broad match as expand means to grow bigger wider broader
.

Broad Match - This is the default option. If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your ads may appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. For example, your ad may appear for the queries buy tennis shoes and tennis sneakers but not tennis players.

I would think many should pray their keyword terms do not show up in too broad of a search query.

If you notice it says your keywords may show up with other words, so for example a podiatrist, whose ads for "foot care" using broad match could and probably would show up, for a term such as "foot fetish".

Now while I am not sure how much a click on an ad for foot fetish would cost the Podiatrist... it still is a cost he should not have to pay... and it most certainly could hurt his brand.

I will agree it has some value for keyword research.

Peace

Google used to list the words that ads would be expanded to but no longer does... guess too many people used them to negative out too may profits....

Google used to list the words that ads would be expanded to but no longer does... guess too many people used them to negative out too may profits....

Aussie I am trying to negate terms and am finding I am losing the battle... and instead have been forced into exact matching on the particular campaigns in question...

The webmaster has live help that shows him the terms used to find his site and the amount of PPC waste is astonishing...

If you are going broad initially you can use the Overture tool to see the variations using the main term and get negatives that way for Google... it is a start and then filter through and see what works and go exact and phrase with negatives

Google used to list the words that ads would be expanded to but no longer does... guess too many people used them to negative out too may profits....
IMHO this and a few other changes have rendered the Google keyword tool almost useless. Like others, I've resorted to phrase or exact match for most of my keywords to avoid getting hit with poor-performing expanded broad matches. It's too bad, because I think Google is netting less money from us this way than the old way. However, on balance they're probably making lots more from unsuspecting, less-sophisticated advertisers...

Melissa

We were trying to expand our reach by 30%, but kept coming up short on Google. We asked for help. And help we got. A Google optimizer worked to optimize 1 of our accounts.

Our previous strategy made use of all 3 matching options, over time we have built an extensive negative list, removed poor performing terms and of course blocked certain sites. We had high quality clicks and solid conversions.. but needed to grow (greedy eh?)

It was interesting with what google did.
They did restructure the campaign ad groups set up
and then they did something that surprised me

They reduced our 50k terms down to about 11k and broad matched all of them, no exact or phrase match. Then they built out a more extensive negative match list.

The result?
Our clicks tanked!
Our conversions sucked
and after 3 days of famine we canned the "optimized" strategy and went back to our normal set up.

I don't mean to Bash Google here, the optimizer worked very hard for us, and for free. My account rep was extremely responsive and a pro all around. However, I should have realized that no matter their optimization experience, they dont/cant understand our clients business as well as myself and that makes all the difference when creating and managing campaigns for high conversions.

I'm not unhappy with the experience
- nothing ventured nothing gained.

Discovery

I should have realized that no matter their optimization experience, they dont/cant understand our clients business as well as myself and that makes all the difference when creating and managing campaigns for high conversions.
Discovery

I think thats very important information to everyone and is a one of the reasons why many businesses are inhouseing their SEO/SEM practice.

Discovery

Mind if I use your post in an article I want to do?

Time to enlighten the many.....

This is my first post here. I just want to know, how do I tell what Google is broad matching me to?

I can't find a report or anything that lets me know so that I can build a negative terms list.

When you set up your keywords you have multiple options
for example we will use the term "Photo Software"

If you enter in your Google AdWord in as Photo Software
you will show impressions for Monkey Software
you will show impressions for Monkey Photo

Hence your impressions go way up
CTR (Click through rate) goes down
Conversions will go down
Google will then say, "Your ad sucks ... if you want back in up your minimum rate to stay and play with the rest of the group"

If you use exact terms [Photo Software] > enter in with the square brackets around the term

You will only appear when that exact term is entered
no monkey software.... no monkey photo

Hence your Impressions will be saved for those actually looking for Photo Software... hence you qualify the visitor right out of the gate

This increases the CTR ... increases your average rank
Increasing more traffic .... increases more sales

When I took over SEM / SEO for a digital camera software company about three years ago I switched from Broad to Exact and we went from about 1.75:1 ratio (for every $1 spent you would get $1.75 in revenue) to 4:1 ratio (for every $1 spent we made back $4)

Now doing this at the time around traditional marketing old farts was quite interesting because they were used to bulk mailings and email was super high tech. The fear in there eyes when we reported this at the quarterly board meeting was a joy to behold...

So how do you know if you have [Exact] "Phrase" -Negative or Broad? simply by looking how you have entered in your keywords.

The biggest benefit I have seen using Exact is the implementation of them into the Dynamic keywords (I mention this earlier in the string here) When we implemented this we saw significant increase in non-brand related keywords... in some cases keywords increased in conversion by 30-75 percent because the exact phrase that the Google searcher was looking for was bolded right into the ad ... speaking directly to what they were looking for.

You basically have to realize the Google optimizers are basically to give you a little knowledge but not alot of knowledge ... because after all they are in the business of profit and if they can keep you stupid and paying ... who can blame them.

Get educated and dont be shy to experiment ... get friendly with your analytics and spread sheet gurus at work and get down and dirty with it all

Hope that helps

Greenlink,

you won't know unless you have analytics software installed on your site
there are free ones out there but usually if your spending alot on ppc campaigns you might want to try some of the more powerful ones that does more than just capture keywords.

Thank vipjun and huebdoo for the reply. I am wondering though, is there any way that I can tell from the referral link in my logs what raw query adwords matched me to? Or is that completely hidden by the redirect? Can I achieve this by adding the keyword into my destination URL?

As far as the analytics packages - can these actually capture which queries generated ad clicks (not my bidded keywords - but the actual queries)? As I understand it, these packages usually look at the referral from organic queries or bidded phrases - but not full queries on paid searches. Is that correct?

I guess my problem is that I really want to bid broadly and build a negative words list (as someone suggested earlier in this thread), but I am not sure what to put in the negative terms list. I know that google matches me to all kinds of stuff - some of which is right on and other stuff that dosn't really seem related to my bidded phrase at all. I can bid exactly but that is pretty limiting of my traffic (even if the traffic that is generated is of higher quality). I want to bid highly for Google's broad matches that are related and not be considered at all for the others. I guess I will just have to go to exact and manage more permutations of keywords.

Greenlink

You can track urls through your raw logs and yes it should show the queries that were used as well.

In your ads use a referal URL in your destination URL (Where people will land) to tell you which search engine the click came from.

www.mywebsite.com/?refer=googleppc

You can even add more info to the end of the referal string that is of import to you.

It is important to remember the following issues

In Common Log Format files (CLF), each one of the line represents a 'hit' or one request. When a visitor lands on your website they are served a page with three images, it shows up as four lines of text in your CLF file — one request each for the three images, and one request for the HTML file itself.

CLF files are standardized, so they almost always look the same. A normal CLF file logs the data in this format:

user's computer ident userID [date and time] "requested file" status
filesize

If your site requires log in then that infor will be recorded.

The request field logs the type of request made by the user, as well as the path and name of the requested file.

I would say also that a website of any amount of traffic daily is going to generate 1,000s of lines in your log files and the data is not easily read without some sort of log analyer.

There are free log analyers you can download, purchase one, or find a reasonably priced analytics package.

Webceo has one plus there are others however some can be expensive.

If you have a Google account of any type I would recommend applying for Urchin Analytics from Google.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

It is quite impressive in it's ability to measure your conversion data.

Hope this helps

There are three ideal ways that you can find out what users are searching for.

Using a url string like mysite.com/?refer=ppc for a log file.
this will tell you for the most part which keyword Ad your user clicked on to get to yoursite. This is mainly used to track what the user is doing on yoursite because you can get the keyword search data from going into your google account and checking your keyword spend. It is not entirely accurate as to what keyword your users typed in the search box, instead it is telling you which AD keyword the user clicked. The difference is this.

Lets say you are selling yellow widgets
your landing page would be something like widgets.com/yellowwidgets.php

you would might a keyword "yellow widgets" and "buy widgets" for the example lets say they are on broad match.
So your new url will like this
widgets.com/yellowwidgets.php?keyword=yellow_widgets
widgets.com/yellowwidgets.php?keyword=buy_widgets
Now if someone searches "buy yellow widgets"
google might display the ad "yellow widgets" but you will not know that they searched "buy yellow widgets" you will only know that they clicked on the ad with the keyword "yellow widgets"

second solution
Analytics like google analytics is able to tell you what the users typed in the search query without you having to create extra information in the destination URL.
This is done by
Capturing the url string that was passed on in the http header
google.com/search?hl=en&q=yellow+widgets&btnG=Google+Search
In this example you will know that they searched for "buy yellow widgets"
and your url can remain unchanged and simply be www.widgets.com/yellowwidgets.php for all your key terms
If you want even more tracking you can have the URL string like solution 1
www.widgets.com/yellowwidgets.php?keyword=yellow_widgets
You can interpret this data as a user typing "buy yellow widgets"
and the keyword in your Adwords account that showed up was "yellow widgets" and not "buy widgets"

The most comprehensive solution is using an analytics /w bidmanagement tools that have a search engine api. This can tell you even more information such as, the user's search query, and what particular Ad text shown. The pricing on this type of tool will usually have an intial fee coupled with a subscription fee that range from a few thousand a month to over 10k. I would only recommend it for seasoned SEM proffessionals that manages over $100,000 a month on PPC campaigns.

you can add a keyword insert into the destination url and it will put the actual searched keyword at the end of your tracking code and grab it that way too.... helps knowing what works as well as what to negative

Thanks for the responses. I think I will try and use the keyword insert into the destination URL and see what Google is matching me too.

Just keep in mind that yahoo does not support dynamic keyword
and Im not sure if MSN supports it in the URL.

In the future, if you decide to go into other engines you will have to edit your URLs or not have tracking.

MSN does ... Yahoo does not have it yet... hopefully the new changes may bring it...

This is my first post here. I just want to know, how do I tell what Google is broad matching me to?

I can't find a report or anything that lets me know so that I can build a negative terms list.

You will need a log analyzer that will pull the keywords and referrer for all your page entries. I use tracking URLs on all my PPC ads and I can pull key words for every PPC entry. My log analyzer is Nettracker and I use custom Nettracker reports for Google PPC keyword analysis. Nettracker is expensive. You can probably start with a free trial log analyzer from somebody.

Find a log analyzer and learn how to use it.

You will need a log analyzer that will pull the keywords and referrer for all your page entries. I use tracking URLs on all my PPC ads and I can pull key words for every PPC entry. My log analyzer is Nettracker and I use custom Nettracker reports for Google PPC keyword analysis. Nettracker is expensive. You can probably start with a free trial log analyzer from somebody.

Find a log analyzer and learn how to use it.

tonerman.... you are a seasoned pro now!

tonerman.... you are a seasoned pro now!

I don't know Aussie. :confused: I've been thinking about asking you, or someone else who's bright, to run my campaigns! :)

I don't know Aussie. :confused: I've been thinking about asking you, or someone else who's bright, to run my campaigns! :)

Really... you do seem to be getting the hang of it... I know initially it can be a little time consuming but having the perspective of your business will really help in the long run and save you time with negatives etc...