'Improved' Adwords Exact & Phrase Matching. How and when to opt out.

Writing about web page http://www.perrymarshall.com/22010/exact-match-stupidity-tax/

Back on the 17th April Google Adwords announced the following change that will come into effect mid-May:

“New matching behavior for phrase and exact match keywords”

Their exact and phrase matching have been expanded to automatically include:

1. Misspellings and typos.
2. Plurals and singulars will be treated the same.
3. Stemmings
4. Abbreviations

Many Adwords advertisers have been bidding on typos and can confirm Google’s data that over 7% of searches have misspellings.
But these have generated fewer clicks and conversions since Google’s search results started predicting and offering search term options.

There are two things happening here:

1. Search terms are getting longer and better, we take the hint.
2. We often corrected the search when google adds a link to click whth what we meant to click.

Stemming is also dangerous.
The word ‘forged’ was broad matched to ‘forging’ and ‘forgery’.
For my metal forging client forging was fine but forgery matches were mostly false.

Perry Marshall introduces some great insights into the difference between singular searches and plural searches. Their research shows that the singular terms indicate the searcher is ready to buy.

I have found one marketplace where the reverse applies.

Your historic data can reveal if your campaign is in the majority as on ‘planet Perry’ or with my exception only if you have bid on both exact singular and plural terms. For new campaigns you will have to turn the ‘improvement’ off in your campaign settings. See Perry’s ‘Exact Match Stupidity Tax’ post for details, and below

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Robert McGonigle : 08 May 2012 15:54 |  Tags: Exach Match Stupidity Tax |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem