Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 14 - Keyword match types

Exact Match is dead. Long live Exact Match!

If you've been noticing some crazy stuff going down in your Search Terms Report, you are not alone. 

Although there have been no official announcements from Google, Keyword match types have changed. And in this episode, I'm giving you the full scoop. 

I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales, and I spent years working for other brands at Google. Now I work for you. This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 14, Keyword match types. 

Each episode, I answer three questions that you've asked me on social media, sharing my best strategies, tips, tactics, and examples so you can make your Google Ads more effective. 

Be sure to stay tuned till the end of the episode where I'll share this week's Insider Challenge for you to solve. 

And now, to our first question from Bentolabsdesign on TikTok. They say, so I'm guessing Phrase Match is the way to go? I've always wondered. 

And this is in response to a video where I was sharing a bunch of quick Google Ads tips and one of them just said, start with Phrase Match. I should also mention that this is not a new video. It is a repurposed video that I first posted more than a year ago. 

So, until very recently, my universal advice was that, lacking any other context, start with Phrase Match and work up or down from there.

And by that, I mean start with Phrase. If you want to expand, then move into Broad Match. If you want to narrow things down, move into Exact Match. 

Phrase was like your Goldilocks solution, but that is not the case anymore. With the way match types have changed, I can't believe I'm saying this, but I'm moving more towards Exact. 

Here's how Google defines match types now, because again, this has changed. 

Exact Match means “ads may show on searches that are the same meaning as your keyword.”

Exact Match used to mean ads may show on searches that are exactly the same as your keyword, but now they just need to share meaning. 

So whereas before, if you had the Exact Match keyword “furniture store,” you'd pretty much only show on searches if someone was searching for a furniture store, furniture stores, furnishing store maybe would be a close variant. That's it. 

But now it just has to have the same meaning. 

So with the Exact Match keyword “furniture store”, you could serve on a home furnishings shop, which I think we can all agree does not exactly match.

But according to Google's definition, that exactly matches the meaning and therefore it is an Exact Match. 

Then we have Phrase Match. The definition of Phrase Match is “ads may show on searches that include the meaning of your keyword.”

It used to be that Phrase Match ads may show on searches that include your keyword, but now it just has to include the meaning. 

So for example, if my keyword is “Google Ads Course” and someone is searching for “best live AdWords class near me,” that would be a Phrase Match even though that is really not the same thing at all, in my opinion. 

But no one asked for my opinion, except I guess you, because you're listening. 

And then Broad Match. Oh, gotta love Broad Match. It's still broad. 

So Google's definition of Broad Match is “ads may show on searches that relate to your keyword.”

And to be fair, that's always been what Broad Match is. I don't know what the definition used to be, but “ads may show on searches with the same meaning as your keyword” is probably what I would have said if you asked me in like 2015, what does Broad Match mean? 

Funnily enough, that is now the definition of Exact Match. 

What's the takeaway from all this? Is Google evil? They're trying to cheat us? No, no. 

There's two things to keep in mind here. First is that 15% of searches every day on Google are novel. That means they've never been seen before. And so if we all had these super tight Exact Match keywords, tons of Google searches would go, in Google's words, unmonetized, meaning no ads on them. 

And so, yes, it is in Google's best interest to make more money by monetizing more searches, but it's also potentially in our best interest to serve on all these searches that people are looking for that may not be in our search terms report yet or may not be in Keyword Planner yet because there's new intent. 

So, although, yes, this does make Google more money, it can also be a good thing for advertisers. 

But I think the bigger takeaway, and something that me and plenty of other folks have been predicting for years now, is that keywords are going away. The fact that the way Exact Match works in 2024 is basically the way Broad Match worked a decade ago is yet another sign to show us that. 

And of course, Performance Max is a big sign to show us that. Keywords are going away. Keywords as we knew them are gone. We still have them, but they do not work the same. They're going to go away. 

So are you ready? Is your website optimized so Google can understand exactly what it's about? Do you have killer ad creative? 

You know, the fundamentals become more important than ever in an AI-driven world, not less important. 

So match types have changed. I will not spend much more time bemoaning the way they used to be, but instead I'm going to help you focus on the way they are now and how to make best use of them. 

And since match types aren't working the way they used to, your Search campaigns may not be performing the way they used to. 

It's one of the many reasons I offer Google Ads account audits, so you can get a professional checkup on the health of your account and trusted recommendations for how to improve performance like it's 2024, not 2014. 

If an account audit would be helpful to you right now, visit the link in the episode description to learn more about my Google Ads account audits. 

Our second question today comes from Gavin on TikTok. And he asks, is there any value in using Broad Match with Smart Bidding and lots of negative keywords? Or do you always advise against this? 

I hinted at this when answering the last question. Broad Match is not bad. Broad Match requires large budgets. So at larger scale and with proper conversion tracking, Broad Match plus Smart Bidding works well. 

I would not use Broad Match without Smart Bidding because Smart Bidding is going to pull in all the signals we need to try to narrow down the kajillions of searches you could show on that wouldn't be as relevant. 

And at the level I'm talking about where you're spending hundreds to thousands to even a million dollars a day on Google Ads - yes, I've seen that before - you're not counting the cost of every click. 

You know, no ad spend will be 100 percent efficient whether you're spending ten dollars a day or ten million dollars a day. And when you're at a larger budget, you know a portion of your budget is going to learning and scaling and testing new things. 

And Broad Match does let you find those new opportunities. It lets you scale. It does really simplify management, too, that should not be understated. 

And as much as I always say, “It's for large budgets,” I've been on coaching calls before where I'll go into an account with a business owner who's spending 20 to 30 bucks a day. They have Broad Match keywords because they didn't know any different.

And you know what? It's working well. They don't have negative keywords. They're using Broad Match and most of the search terms are relevant for their business. 

And I share that to say it can absolutely happen. Have I seen far more instances where that doesn't happen and business owners pay for a ton of irrelevant traffic? Yes. And that's why I generally don't recommend Broad Match at smaller budgets. 

Broad Match itself is not evil. It just needs the right things in place to work.

Right things in place being Smart Bidding, and by that I mean Maximize Conversions or Maximize Conversion Value, Target CPA or Target ROAS. Those are your Smart Bidding strategies.

It needs accurate conversion tracking. It’s easier for e-commerce than lead gen, but either way, full funnel, accurate conversion tracking. 

And then something else in your account is audience data, feeding in your first party data, your customer lists. Remarketing as well, although that's not the same as it used to be. We'll be talking about that in a future episode. So, feeding in the information it needs to guide it in the right direction for who is most likely to convert. 

Okay, off my Broad Match soapbox. 

Before we get to the final question, let's play a quick game of two truths and a lie. I'm going to make three statements. Two of them are true. One is a lie. Can you guess which is a lie? 

First, you can get the transcript of each Inside Google Ads episode emailed to you every week for free. 

Second, I just launched a free monthly newsletter for you called The Insider and you can sign up to get actionable Google Ads tips, tricks, and strategies at the link in the episode description. 

And third, TikTok Ads consistently deliver a stronger ROAS than Google Ads. 

Okay, I can't even keep a straight face. The third one's a lie.

TikTok Ads are great, by the way. They can absolutely drive great results for your business, but do they consistently deliver a stronger ROAS than Google Ads? Probably not. 

Which means that, yes, the second one is true. I just can't get enough of oversharing my Google Ads insights with you. So you can grab the Insider on my website to get the stuff you won't find on social media from me, like free webinars and presentations about the latest in Google Ads, articles I've published in leading industry publications, announcements about upcoming events, and more. 

Link: https://free.jyll.ca 

Okay, enough about me. Let's finish up our conversation about Keyword match types. 

Our third question today comes from Yhlbill on TikTok. And they ask, do you exclude the brand name in search campaigns? 

And for the first time, I'm actually combining two questions here, because aprilrainbolt on Threads asked me something very similar. She asked, you mentioned putting the name of the business into the negative keyword list. (So that's what Yhlbill was asking. Do you exclude the brand name?) And April said, you mentioned excluding the brand name. My question is if the title of the business has the service in it, for example, Eric's Plumbing, and you put Eric's Plumbing in the negative keywords, will that not flag the word plumbing as well? 

So let's answer why for Bill's part of the question and then April's. 

Do I exclude the brand name in a Search campaign? For the most part, yes. 

If I'm running a Non-brand Search campaign, I will add the brand name as a negative. I talked about this in Episode 12, the Rapid-fire Reddit episode. You probably want to exclude your brand name if you're running Dynamic Search Ads as well. 

And a quick vocab check, just to make sure we're all on the same page here. A Brand campaign means the keywords you put into the campaign are for your brand name, people searching for you. So if I were running a brand campaign, my keywords would be “Jyll Saskin Gales” “Inside Google Ads,” right? My name, my brand. 

Non-brand or Generic or Category Search means people searching for the thing you sell, but not you. So people searching for “running shoes” or “Google Ads course,” but not for “Nike” or “Jyll Saskin Gales.”

And then Conquesting, which we've spoken about before, is running a Brand campaign on your competitor's name. So Nike advertising on searches for Adidas. 

So I recommend adding your brand name as a negative to your Non-brand campaigns.

And remember your match types for those negative keywords. Although Google can get quite loosey goosey with what counts as a close variant in your keywords, Google will not get loosey goosey in the negatives. Remember, you might want to use Phrase Match or Exact Match in your negative keywords. I actually never use Broad Match in negative keywords because I want to make sure I'm being very clear about what I want excluded. 

This brings us to April's question about if the name of your business includes your Non-brand search term like “Eric's plumbing.” What I would do is put [Eric's plumbing] in Exact Match as a negative, or I would just put “Eric” in Phrase Match as a negative. 

Putting “Eric” in Phrase Match as a negative means I want to show ads when people are searching for whatever my keywords are, but if the user search contains the word Eric, then I don't want to advertise. So that's one way to do it.

Or you could put Exact Match [Eric's plumbing], and so that means if you have the keyword “plumbing,” I want to show ads on all kinds of searches for things that have to do with plumbing. But if the search is exactly “Eric's plumbing,” I don't want to serve an ad.

So by using match types on your negative keywords, you can ensure you're still serving on the searches you want to show on while safely excluding your brand name. 

All right, now it's that time again, this week's Insider Challenge. After sharing this new challenge, I'll let you know how I would have answered last episode's challenge. So here's your challenge, episode 14. 

You've been managing ads for your favorite client for years, and at this point, the core campaigns pretty much run themselves. You run various tests and optimizations each month, of course, to try to scale, but suddenly the Brand campaign starts tanking. 

It used to have a reliable ROAS of 3x to 4x, and now it's down to 2x. You check the search terms report and see that even though you have Exact Match keywords, they are matching to decidedly not Exact Match terms. What do you do?

What do you do? 

You can participate by sending me your response for this challenge or any episode's challenge. The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there is no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real-life Google Ads problem solving. 

If you want to let me know what you would do if your Brand campaign starts tanking because your Exact Match keywords aren't being so exact-y, you can shoot me an email to let me know thegooglepro@jyll.ca, that's J-Y-L-L dot ca, or send me a voice note in my Instagram DMs. I'm @the_google_pro on Instagram and links to both of those in the episode description as well.

Before I sign off, in the last episode, we discussed how to start your career in PPC. And the Insider challenge I posed to you was to answer a prospective client who asked, why should I hire you? 

So it's only fair that I answer this question too. I don't manage ads for clients anymore, so I'll address mine slightly to say, why should someone hire me as their Google Ads coach? Three reasons, and that's my first tip here. 

People digest information well in threes. So three reasons you should hire me as your Google Ads coach. 

First, I worked at Google, and that doesn't mean I'm drunk on Kool-Aid. It means I understand how Google works, how Google thinks, and how to work the system rather than fighting against it to find the best performance. 

I'm not going to waste your time bemoaning how things used to be, as you saw in this episode. I'm going to ensure you've got the knowledge and guidance you need to manage your ads effectively now and in the future. If you want someone to bitch about Google with, I'm not your gal. 

Second, I know my shit. 

I guess we need a warning on this episode!

I've been working in Google Ads for more than a decade, spending billions of dollars of my clients' money across more than 10,000 Google Ads accounts, but also spending thousands of my own dollars to grow my various businesses over the years. I've been there, done that, and because I have hundreds of coaching clients, I'm still in hundreds of accounts bringing you what you need to know about how Google Ads works today. 

And third, I've been told I have a unique skill for explaining things clearly and simply. It's one thing to be an expert, another to be able to effectively share that expertise. I coach absolute beginners, I coach other experts and everyone in between. 

You can take a look at the more than a thousand short form videos I've posted on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube to see my expertise and my explanatory skills in action. 

What do you think? Are you sold? How would you answer differently? 

I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.

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