Exact match, broad match...

[Katja]

I've been trying to get my head around the whole long tail concept and I'm sure I'm missing the point somewhere...

As I understand it I should bid on the term "widgets" as a broad term but exclude any exact match terms I want to bid on, eg "great widgets". I then set up a separate place for these exact terms... should it be a separate ad group or does it need to be a separate campaign?

I've heard that more obscure exact terms could be cheaper to bid on but I don't see how if my competitors are all bidding on "widgets" on a broad match basis. Won't their ad always appear?

I guess what I don't get is how seperating our exact matches helps compared to having the broad match for my core keyword since I need to keep the broad match for that term anyway. Do I get a boost to my ad positioning for having an exact match and hence why I can bid lower?

:confused: Any help appreciated!

[Waldo]

I've heard that more obscure exact terms could be cheaper to bid on but I don't see how if my competitors are all bidding on "widgets" on a broad match basis. Won't their ad always appear?


Let's say a query comes in for "long purple widgets" and you are broad matching "widgets"... You have a chance at matching for this query and getting an impression. Google is going to also look for broad matches of "purple widgets". These broad matches are more relevant to the search and are either going to get a higher position or a cheaper CPC than the "widget". The same goes for "long purple widgets".

Now if you are exacting matching a term like [purple widget], then you will only get impressions when the query is "purple widget" because it is the most relevant keyword (no other combination is better). So if a competitor broadmatches "widget" while you have the exact match [long purple widget] and the query is "long purple widget" you will certainly be shown higher because of your relevance or be given a discount on cost(over broad match keywords)

The way I see Google acting is: [exact match] > "phrase match" > broad match. Sure, someone could always drop $10/click to broad match "widget" but the ad text may not be relevant and that consumer wouldn't be as far along in the buying cycle. They would see a terrible ROI.

I recommend you take a look at your "search query report" under the reports tab. It's an excellent place to mine for some phrase and exact match queries as well as some negative keywords.

Hope this helped.