Inside Google Ads podcast: Episode 52 - Exact & Phrase Match Keywords
Which keyword match type is the most expensive? Which keyword match type is the best? Which keyword match type should you use?
As usual, we're going beyond “it depends” today so you can learn whether you should use Phrase Match keywords, Exact Match keywords, or potentially even Broad Match keywords.
Let's get into it. I'm your host, Jyll Saskin Gales. I spent six years working for big brands at Google, and now I work for you.
This is Inside Google Ads, Episode 52: Exact and Phrase Match keywords.
Our first question today comes from Hotdogkatan on TikTok and they say, why is Phrase Match and Exact Match expensive? Broad Match is a bit cheaper.
Phrase Match and Exact Match aren't inherently more expensive than Broad Match. Remember, it's an auction. So the more people bidding on a user search, the more expensive it'll be.
Exact Match tends to be the most expensive match type and Broad the cheapest because Exact Match has the most narrow targeting. You'll usually use Exact Match for your most specific keywords that are exactly the searches you want to target. And guess what? Your competitors also want to target those searches. Those are the most desirable searches.
Whereas, with Broad Match, it tends to be the cheapest CPCs because you're going to match to thousands of different searches that are more long tail or more generic or just not as desirable. So not all of your competitors will be targeting those searches alongside you, and that makes them cheaper.
The calculus for you is whether the cheaper traffic that comes through Broad Match converts at a high enough rate to be worth it, or a high enough volume to be worth it.
Let's make up some numbers to see how this shakes out with an example. Let's say you have a handful of Exact Match keywords with $5 average CPC and 2% conversion rate. That would give you a $250 CPA. (Trust me on the math.) And then let's say you have a handful of Broad Match keywords with a $2 average CPC, 0.5% conversion rate - with a lower CPC, but also a lower conversion rate. That's usually what you'll find since the searches are less relevant. And those numbers would give you a $400 CPA. So you could get two and a half times more clicks from Broad Match than Exact Match. That's a lot more website traffic! But since it converts worse in this example, you'd have a $400 CPA from Broad Match rather than a $250 CPA from Exact Match.
Put another way, let's say you have a monthly budget of $1,000. Under the Exact Match scenario, you'd get 200 clicks and 4 conversions. Under the Broad Match scenario, you'd get 500 clicks and 2.5 conversions. So is that worth it to your business? Would those Broad Match results still be good, or not considered good and you just want the Exact Match results?
Now this is a made up scenario. It is very possible that Broad Match could convert better or that the CPC difference wouldn't be so wide. The key, if you want to investigate this for your business, is to see if the incremental traffic converts well enough that it'll help you hit your volume goals, or your efficiency goals, or both.
And if you're not sure, you can run an experiment that splits your campaign into two parts, one part with Exact Match keywords and one with Broad Match keywords, to properly AB test the effect on your business. Just be sure to leave it alone until it has statistically significant results. Don't get swayed by any early results coming in! Wait until Google says there is or isn't a significant difference before evaluating. And remember, the smaller your budget, the longer it will take to get significant results.
This is Episode 52 of the Inside Google Ads podcast, rounding out a full year of answering your burning Google Ads questions every single Thursday. If you're enjoying the show, I would appreciate it if you could take 10 seconds and leave me a rating wherever you're listening. And if you're listening on Apple Podcasts right now - yes, you! - I would especially appreciate if you could write a review. Maybe mention your favourite episode or something you've learned from this podcast that's been helpful to you. I'd really appreciate it. Thank you!
Our second question today comes from Yhlbill on TikTok and they say, Exact Match or Phrase Match? And this is in response to a video about negative keywords. So they're asking which match type you should use for negative keywords?
Fun fact, you may have known that negative keywords can have match types, but did you know they do not work the same as regular keyword match types?
And fun fact number two, one of my top LinkedIn posts from last year was three fun facts about negative keywords.
For Yhlbill’s question, let's focus on one of those facts, which is how negative keyword match types work, since that will help you decide whether to use Phrase Match or Exact Match or Broad Match for your negative keywords in Google Ads.
Let's start with Broad Match negatives. And if you've been using Google Ads for some time, then think of this as Broad Match Modifier still hanging around. When you use Broad Match for your negatives, your ad won't show if the user’s search contains all of the words in your negative keyword, even if they're in a different order.
So for example, if you have Yoga Pants as a negative keyword, you wouldn't serve an ad on a search for “Yoga Pants” or on a search for “Pants for Yoga,” but for “Yoga Pant,” you would still show an ad. Your negative words must exactly match the user's search. “Pants” would not block “Pant.” Google has said this is changing, maybe even by the time this episode comes out that will have changed. But from what I'm seeing now in accounts, misspellings, plurals, et cetera, are not yet blocked by negative keywords, though that should be coming.
Okay, what about Phrase Match negatives? This works like Phrase Match in the positive, if close variants didn't exist. So the negative Phrase Match keyword “Yoga Pants” would block any search that contains the exact phrase “Yoga Pants,” like “Best Yoga Pants” or “Yoga Pants Near Me,” but it would not block “Pants for Yoga” or “Yoga Pant.” Though if you had the negative Phrase Match keyword “Yoga Pant,” that would block a search for “Yoga Pants” since “Yoga Pants” contains “Yoga Pant.” This really changes the way you think about negatives, right?
Okay, and then the Negative Exact Match works like Exact Match in the positive, if close variants didn't exist. It is the default when you're reviewing your search terms and adding negatives, it will block the least amount of queries. So if you have the negative Exact Match keyword [Yoga Pants] it will only block the exact Search for “Yoga Pants.” So, “Yoga Pants for Women,” you'd still serve, “Yoga Pant,” you'd still serve, “Yoga Trouser,” you'd still serve, even “Ygoa” spelled Y-G-O-A by accident, “Ygoa Pants,” you'd still serve. Frankly, with all match types, you'd still serve until Google's promise of blocking misspellings comes through.
All in all, it's really only Broad Match negative keywords that don't work how you think they do, or at least that aren't intuitive to me. As for whether you should use Broad, Exact, or Phrase Match negatives, I generally use Phrase Match negatives when I'm helping my clients optimize their campaigns, and I'll break it down to just the necessary part I want to block.
So in this example, let's say that we sell, I don't know, leggings, and we're matching to searches for “Yoga Pants,” and we don't want that. I would probably put the word “Yoga” as a Phrase Match negative to let it block out anyone looking for anything remotely like “Yoga Pants,” if that's not what I sell. I would not put “Yoga Pants” in there because that wouldn't block, for example, “Yoga Pant,” “Pants for Yoga,” et cetera.
Now, before we get to our final question today, I've recently launched something new, something free, and this feels like the right time and place to share it with you, rounding out one whole year of this podcast.
By popular request, I'm excited to share Google Ads Made Easy: Launch your first Google Search campaign in under an hour. This is a four-part video series by me, completely free, in which I show you how to create a Google Ads account the right way, research your keywords, write an ad, build your campaign in the Google Ads interface and set it up for success. And the whole thing takes less than 60 minutes!
If you or someone you know wants to launch their first Google Search campaign this year, you can go to learn.jyll.ca/easy to sign up for free. That's learn.jyll.ca/easy, or follow the link in the episode description to launch your first Google Search campaign with me.
Our final question today comes from WouterCrokaert on YouTube and they say, hello Jyll, thank you for your valuable content. I was wondering if it would be a good strategy to put the same keywords per ad group in both Exact and Phrase Match. In my case, I have about 30 keywords for a campaign divided into 6 to 12 ad groups. For example, in case of 3 keywords for an ad group, do I make them 3 Exact and the same 3 Phrase in that ad group? Thanks a lot.
So this person is asking, should they use the same keywords in multiple match types in the same ad group and different ad groups? And my answer is, I do not think it's a good strategy to put the same keywords in different match types in the same ad group and different ad groups, or even in different campaigns.
This was a common strategy 10 years ago, duplicating keywords by match types to have tighter control, but Google Ads has changed so much in so many ways that this strategy won't do you any favours.
Let's say you have the same keyword in Phrase Match and in Exact Match. Whether they're in the same ad group, different ad groups, or different campaigns, for every single user search, only one keyword from your account can move forward into the auction.
A Phrase Match keyword can serve on all of the same searches that Exact can, so by doing this, you're essentially splitting your data and learning unnecessarily across two different keywords. This makes it harder for your campaign to learn and it'll take longer to get consistent results, and to scale your results, because you're splitting that data across multiple keywords unnecessarily. And you won't actually know how your Exact Match keyword is performing because some of the data that would be its data is being stolen by the Phrase one. And vice versa, some of the data that might have matched the Phrase is going to go to the Exact.
The better way to test something like this is to start with one match type and then review your search term data over time to decide if you want to expand or contract. Perhaps you start with your 30 or so keywords across your 6 to 12 ad groups in Exact Match and see how they perform over the first month or two. Are you getting results you're happy with? And when we think about results, think, are you getting enough volume? Are you getting enough efficiency? Look at how the search terms are doing. Do you need a lot of negatives or not? How much of your spend is going to hidden search terms versus search terms you can see? And then from there, if everything is super dialed in and relevant and performing well, but there's not enough volume, then moving some of your keywords from Exact to Phrase Match should be a great way to expand.
And vice versa. Maybe you start in Phrase for all 30 keywords and you review everything and you see that some of your keywords are pulling in really relevant search terms via the Search Terms Report and some aren't. Those that aren't, you can move down to Exact Match instead and see how that combination works.
So, which is better, Phrase Match or Exact Match keywords?
These days, my answer is usually Exact or Broad. Use Exact Match when you need tighter control and or when you have less budget to work with. Use Broad Match when you want to grow and/or when you have more budget to work with.
But when we're talking about negative keywords, that's where Phrase Match is usually the top of my toolkit, at least for now.
Today's Insider Challenge is this. You're auditing a Google Ads account that uses Broad Match keywords. The Search Terms Report shows mostly relevant stuff, but more than 50% of the budget is going to other search terms, which you can't see. Performance is good from a volume perspective, but not as efficient as your client would like. They want their CPAs to be about 20% lower than they are now. What steps might you take to try to achieve that?
The beauty of the Insider Challenge is there's no right or wrong answer, just an opportunity to stretch your brain on real life Google Ads problem solving.
Last Episode's Challenge was this. Let's say you just started working at a company that offers financial credit cards. So remarketing, Custom Segments, that stuff is off limits. How would you go about building a strategy for a Demand Gen campaign for a company that sells credit products?
So although you can't use remarketing and other of those really super specific audience targeting features we love, you can still use Google's audiences. And Google has two kinds of audiences that would be really useful here.
First is In-market segments. In-market for credit and lending, but then also more specific things like In-market for credit cards, for example, or whatever kind of products you offer. Those would work really perfectly here.
And then second, Life events segments, because often people need credit when they're going through a life transition, like buying a new home or getting married soon. Those would also work really well as long as you have the creative to match.
And that's the next part of my Demand Gen strategy: audience targeting, sure, but then the ad creative itself. I would want images and video that match my chosen targeting, especially around those Life events segments.
If I'm targeting people purchasing a home soon who may need my financial credit products to do so, I would want to ensure that my imagery and video shows real people. If I'm targeting people purchasing a home soon who may need my financial credit products to do so, I would want to ensure that my imagery and video shows real people in that real life situation, that they're relatable, that there's attention-grabbing copy or script. How can my products make your home purchase better? That's what we need to get across.
And then the third pillar of this strategy is conversion tracking. For a product like this, I'm assuming it's lead gen and we're going to want to optimize for form fills, sure, but also use Offline Conversion Tracking (OCT) so we can focus on qualified leads. There's a chance we get a high volume of unqualified leads with a format like Demand Gen, depending how generic our creative is and how specific our offering is, so OCT would be key for success alongside that creative and that audience targeting.
What about you? How would you build your Demand Gen strategy for a company that sells credit products?
I'm Jyll Saskin Gales and I'll see you next time Inside Google Ads.