This is a rather unimportant example in itself, however, though cases like this do not happen frequently, it can shed a light on how phrase match works in practice thereby helping you understand this subject more thoroughly.
An advertiser recently setup a campaign using all phrase match terms such as
“his phrase 1″,
“his phrase 2″,
etc.
However he noticed that he wasn’t getting any impressions or clickers…so when he tested it himself searching for his phrase 1 (not in quotes) or his phrase 2 (not in quotes) nothing came up. But then he tried “his phrase 1″ (in quotes) and “his phrase 2″ (in quotes) and it did come up. He thought this didn’t make sense to him because he was of the opinion that using the quotes with phrase match was supposed to make his ads come up if someone just typed in those terms…not having to use quotes in the search query…and that’s what Google’s Instrutions seemed to indicate….
First off, the right approach requires the use the Ad Preview Tool linked-to below
* Ad Preview Tool
https://adwords.google.com/select/AdTargetingPreviewTool
for viewing his own ad so as not to accrue false stats. The advertiser’s anticipation that his ad should display for his phrase 1 (not in quotes) and/or his phrase 2 (not in quotes) each and every time is not correct. Especially the frequent combination of a low budget and a popular keyword may cause the system to show an ad only every 10th or 100th time so as not to deplete the budget too early during the day. The phenomenon the above advertiser experienced was due to this fact.
Next time, he searched for “his phrase 1″ (quotes) and/or “his phrase 2″ (quotes) thereby matching his actual phrase match keywords. This time, however, he happened to search for very rare search queries since users don’t often use speech marks in the search terms. Consequently the system was happy to deliver his ad each and every time.
