Pleeeeaaasssee. Does Google really think they are doing advertisers a “favor” with this one? If so, Google please stop doing me favors 
Concentrate on problems like noting accounts under review, or getting the customer service department to reply to people in a timely manner. Don’t ‘help’ us with expanding broad match to what I would call irrelevant search queries. Does this expanded broad match reflect Google’s love of relevance and quality score? Very questionable to say the least.
Let it be known that I am not a fan of broad match keywords. They have their place when extensive use of -negative keywords are implemented but in general I never use them and here is why.
A web design client asked me to look over her AdWords account for her because it was not producing any inquiries.
In looking at her keywords list (mostly broad match) I immediately was concerned so headed to the report center to run a Search Query Performance Report.
Below is a *sampling* of the key keyword list. I have provided a sampling but rest assured I did not remove any keywords like “aerosmith” or “at t” or “italian stuffed peppers”. There were variations on the below keywords that were removed.
Sample of Keywords
Guided tour italy, guided tour of umbria, italian guided tour, italian tour, italian tours, italian vacation tuscany, italian vacation umbria, italy guided tours, italy holiday, italy travel package, italy travel tours, “holiday tours to italy”, “italian guided tours”, “italy tour vacations”, “vacation tours to italy”
Not the greatest list but pretty much exactly what I expect to see from most new AdWords advertisers.
Now this is why I am so miffed. Expanded Broad Match allowed her to come up (and get clicks) on the following queries. Note: that only a fraction of the bogus traffic is noted here.
Search Query Performance Report
Search Query Performance Report
Bogus Traffic: aerosmith concert, at t, france, italian stuffed peppers, justin timberlake concert ticket, porno italy, florence italy car rentals, curtains tuscany, arabian jasmine plant grand duke of tuscany.
Great Huh? I know *how* this happened. Expand ‘tours’ to ‘concert’, expand ‘europe’ to ‘France’, expand ‘italian vacations’ to ‘italian stuffed peppers’. Make sense? Of course not! Remember these are not just impressions – she paid money to Google for clicks on these search queries. Good to know if you market ‘italian tours’ that Google thinks ‘justin timberlake concert tickets’ is relevant. Truly frightening! What I do not know is *why* would Google do this? Considering they are all about relevance and quality. This seems to degrade the quality to me if I see a Advertisement that reads “Group Tours to Italy” when I am looking for tickets to the “aerosmith concert”… Right? My real concern is broad match is the default option for AdWords. Most advertisers are just following along.
One of these clicks (curtains tuscany) cost her $4.30, another (arabian jasmine plant grand duke of tuscany) $3.27.
How to you fix that?
Stop using broad match. Take control over your account. Run regular reports on search queries. Switch your keywords over to “phrase” and [exact match] now. It may take a little time to come up with all the variables of *guided italian tour* in phrase match but the results will be better CTR, lower costs and higher conversions. Really, what is there to loose?…besides more of your money.
Although I agree that broad matching comes up with some daft matches (as you have shown) and you should be very wary of them, you cannot just switch to all phrase and exact matches. You say “what is there to loose?” (sic) – the first thing is that google will label loads of your nice phrase and exact matches as not searched for enough so not triggering your ad, the text is “The keyword phrase that you have entered has a low search volume and is not showing any of your ads”. At least 50% of my keywords are like that even though they were all derived from actual searches (gleaned from google analytics and my own web server log analysis). Without the broad match and heavy use of negatives there is no way to capture some of these phrases.
Hi Martin – it depends on the budget and ROI. If you exhaust all your budget with Exact Match and achieve or beat your target ROI, why use Phrase Match? Similarly, if you exhaust the budget and meet your target ROI with Exact and Phrase Match, why add Broad Match? And if adding Broad Match causes the ROI to go below the goal…
I’ll typically use a gradually escalating bid price on Broad Match to find search queries that are a good candidate for negative keywords. IME, higher Broad Match bids are a signal to Google to spread the search. The lower that you bid, roughly, the narrower the range.
Some of Kim’s observations might also be “Search History Permutation”, covered on the Merjis and Bill Slawski’s “SEO By The Sea” blogs and not yet covered here.
Thank you for showing what I’ve been thinking this whole time
Martin,
I do agree about adding negatives as an option and mentioned that broad match can be used with extensive -negative matches. I wonder how does the small advertiser do this when their ads show up for a search like this? (arabian jasmine plant grand duke of tuscany)? When does their work stop when it comes to adding negatives? If they have someone professionally managing their account then it could be doable, but for most adwords advertisers this is not an option. I am glad that you are savvy and able to keep up with it.
“The keyword phrase that you have entered has a low search volume and is not showing any of your ads” Perhaps you are in a real niche market an have very specific keywords. If you have budget, tools and time to find and enter all the negatives you need to handle the account then keep doing what you are doing. I think most will have a better conversion ratio with more targeted keywords and many advertisers can not afford to spend money on bad clicks. This client of mine had a 15.00 daily budget and one bad click can eat 1/3 of her budget. She can not afford the learning curve of adding negatives.
JezC and MrsC,
I’m not completely sure if I’m in a niche market but probably – only running one account it is not possible to compare. I have 12345 keywords – I’d guess that is a lot so it is probable that many of them will not be searched for that often. I harvested most of these keywords from my apache logs initially with some home grown perl and later with analytics. The account gets around 200-250 clicks a day which is within my budget and this leads to around 20-25 conversions a day. Ignoring a few campaigns which are /really/ niche this is ~ 5% to 50% conversion rate across the campaigns which I believe is ok.
There is no way I could exhaust all my budget just with exact match and phrase match unless I increased the bids really high or bid stupidly on poor performing phrases. The point I was trying to make is my reasoning for using broad matches originally was it was a way of harvesting phrases to use in my campaign. I reasoned that I would add some broad matches then watch my logs carefully and add any phrases I did not already have and add some negatives whilst I was broad matching (this was before google analytics). Eventually I would have just about every phrase likely to be searched for. I believe I am as close as reasonable to that now BUT I cannot remove the broad matches because google won’t activate many of the phrases because it claims they are low search volume.
For example I have an adgroup with 56 exact and phrase matches, one broad match and a handful of negatives. Non of the phrases are more than 4 words (note ordered combinations of 4 is 24 but there are 2 word and 3 word phrases too). None of the phrases are poor – all ok or great. The broad match still represents 50% of the impressions, nearly 60% of the clicks and ALL but 1 of the conversions. Of the 56 non-broad keywords 26 are labeled as low search volume and 10 are labeled as did not trigger ad but another keyword in the group did. I don’t believe it is possible to find any more keywords you could add because I have them all covered BUT half of them are not active (low search volume) so I have to keep the broad match.
If you can explain to me how you can make those low search volume keywords get impressions without using a broad match I’d be delighted but I am doubtful because that is how adwords works.
Your examples illustrate how poorly conceived campaigns using broad matches cost more for less because the ads are showing for poor matches because googles broad matching algorithm is rubbish. There is no doubt that in the case you cite and others I have seen you both talk about that broad matching is not a good idea as a long term strategy but in smaller markets I cannot see how you can avoid it when google refuses to show your ad for specific phrases or exact matches.
Although this may sound like I’m arguing for broad matching as it works I am not. I agree the broad matching algorithm is rubbish but my account would be much worse off without it. I just thought you should take that into account when basically advising everyone to stop using broad matching.
Hi Martin – I’m not arguing against all use of Broad Match. I’m arguing for controlled usage. Try to find your volume first on Exact Match. If you can’t get it there, use Phrase Match. If you can’t find it there, then use Broad Match with a progressively increasing bid and, depending on the market, possibly *lots* of negative keywords. I have some clients with single AdGroups that have one broad match keyword, and around 1,000 negative keywords (and still growing).
The key problem this addresses is that Google’s default is to start all users on Broad Match. Most of the users we see in the AdWords Help Forum discover this creates ROI problems, and also face poor Quality Score problems. By using Exact->Phrase->Broad you avoid a lot of wasted spending on poorly matched search queries and you can focus on increasing Quality Score. Proven strategy that works again and again.
Your method, reaping real searches from server logfiles, is unusual. IME, most of the users we see in the help forum don’t know where their log files are, and can’t parse them. You’re clearly an “advanced” user. I don’t expect advanced users to use the same techniques as learners. This blog, being a spin off of the AdWords Help Forum, tends to address beginners more than advanced users. I’ll guess your major problem was identifying related searches in order to put them in the same AdGroup, rather than seeing your spend go through the roof while you had no conversions – a different problem from that which this article tackles.
Writing all articles to handle special cases, tends to make them more like a book than a blog. A marketing exercise in audiences and segmentation; we’re expecting an audience of largely new advertisers with basic problems; you’re in a segment of expert users, outside the primary segment for this article
JezC,
I’m ignoring the possible inference from your response that advanced users are not welcome here
I know the contribution that all of the “Adwords Help Experts” have made in the various adwords help forums and know that it has been greatly appreciated. I wish you well in your venture to attract new customers.
As a long time user of the adwords system it is easy to overlook the gotchas you found and have worked around. Starting a new adwords user on broad match keywords is undoubtedly one of those and I certainly agree that advising a new adwords user to avoid broad matches initially is good advice. However it does not stop there as I note the adwords “Campaign Optimizer” also encourages you to mostly add broad matches to your campaigns (at least it does for me). Then there is the default to use the content network (a difficult area for a novice) and parked domains on the search network (an area a novice is very unlikely to know about unless they’ve read Richards’s recent article). I even note that in my campaigns which are not on the content network google now puts up a notice “In this ad group, your keywords trigger ads on search only. The content network is turned off in your campaign settings (Learn more)” which is undoubtedly steering someone to thinking there might be something wrong. Lastly, if I was being really cynical why on the summary page for an adgroup is “Off” next to “Placements that you’ve targeted” and “Other placements on the content network” in red (usually red is used to indicate something is in error or dangerous – certainly the latter I suppose).
So, adwords is possibly a daunting place for new users full of pitfalls and I’m sure your help and advice are greatly appreciated but I hope you won’t ignore the more “advanced” users if for no other reason than google watches this site and given the authors experience, they may actually take some notice.
Martin,
We really want advanced users to visit. The AWHE team has actually discussed the advanced user in-depth recently. So I am glad you brought your comments to us. It made me realize that I need to add a category for ‘beginner’ and ‘advanced’. The points you bring up are excellent and I hope you continue to visit and be comfortable posting here.
Articles are coming for the advanced users of adwords soon so stay tuned. Subscribe for feeds or find us on twitter (if a member) at http://www.twitter.com/awhe to get notified on new posts.
If there is ever a topic you really want more info on feel free to suggest it.
Take Care,
Kim
I think that the real intent behind Google setting up the Broad Match as a default setting and coming up with the expanded Broad Match is to catch users off guard and derive more revenue from them. Google is just like every other behemoth company out there. They don’t care about their customers, only about their stockholders. They are constantly looking for ways to increase revenue and what better way to do that than to serve ads for irrelevant search terms. They are not helping the advertisers, they are only helping themselves to more of the advertiser’s money.
@Martin – Oh, and I was trying so hard to make sure you didn’t feel unloved.
Rich and I have both posted some quite detailed AdWords stuff for more advanced users, on our own blogs. We’re putting up as much of that content as we can – we felt that a central resource would be more useful than a multi-blog one. And if we disagree about a technique, that’s important to know, too 
I’ve got some detailed comments on low volume exact matches… But for the sake of the sense of this article, I’ve been holding back on them. I’ll try to get an article up about low volume exact matches for advanced users.
BTW, did you see the beginner article with the video? Part 1 of “getting started”. Would like to hear your comments and whether you disagree with that way to start.
@JP Kinda yes, kinda no.
Exposing new users to Broad Match could prevent them from becoming dissuaded. If you had Martin’s low volume and highly precise list, you’d get zero impressions. Very discouraging. The problem is that there’s no visible “lever” to set how wide you want the Broad Match to be… My suspicion is that it has more to do with unsold inventory than advertiser intention. But I have a nasty suspicious mind 
MrsC: thanks for the reply – I look forward to reading more
JezC: I always keep an eye on yours and richards blogs as there is often some good info on them. I hadn’t watched the beginner video until you pointed it out but now I’ve watched it I think I would have found it useful when I was starting. One of the problems I had was that I inherited a poorly setup account and eventually had to scrap it altogether and start again on a new account.
Reading back through my posts I realise I missed an important point out. I need broad matches to cover all those phrases google say are not searched for enough but I DON’T need expanded broad matching and DON’T want it. I cannot imagine why anyone who can spend any time building their phrases would really want it and for those that cannot you are probably wasting your time with adwords.
Ah, Martin… At some point I’ll release some of the tools that I use for managing accounts. Keyword management tools. Keyword management tools that reduce the time spent managing them
@Martin – I think we’ve had some good discussions in the old AdWords Help groups. You are more than welcome here! Thanks for adding to the conversation here.
Regarding broad match, I agree that expanded matching should be optional. That’s one of the features I requested when Google asked for feedback. Will be interesting to see what AdWordsPro.Sarah tells us about that. See Top 2 Ideas From The AdWords Wish List .
I call it “fraud match”.
LOL. Fraud match. Clever.
My first forays into expanded broad match were also not very impressive. But then I expected that, so they were not very aggressive forays
As in everything AdWords it all comes down to what you are trying to accomplish and how you are measuring it.
For relatively “young” accounts looking for direct marketing dollars today, as opposed to tomorrows brand awareness for instance, many of Google’s “optimization” suggestions are losers because they are volume suggestions.
How to get “more” as opposed to “better”.
Quality Score on the other hand does address the “better” issue.
So like old fashion vanilla broad match, content and search network, etc; I think Expanded Broad Match has a place, but should come with a lot more warnings about what that place is.
It sure isn’t for newbies looking for direct marketing dollars.
-Tom Hale
I regularly get some nasty surprises from expanded broad match when I check my search query report, even though my negative keyword list is 600+ and counting. However, I don’t have a good alternative for some of the same reasons pointed out by others.
I don’t expect this to change. Look at it from Google’s perspective.
They sell us a product – advertising space.
On any given day, they have a finite amount of this advertising space to sell in any market segment.
If they don’t sell all of the space they have available, it’s an opportunity lost to them forever.
Sales of broader, less specific keyword phrases are far more predictable than sales of 3,4 or 5 word niche phrases.
Consequently, Google seems to be encouraging the use of broader phrases by their advertisers so they have more options for any particular search.
None of this is good for us (fewer and fewer working keyword phrases in our markets to pick from and more competition for those phrases) but it makes perfect sense for Google, at least in the short term. In the long term, I predict that it will provoke a serious backlash, particularly if they don’t let advertisers who so desire get back to more classic broad matching. Google is fortunate at this point that most advertisers aren’t really aware of how badly their trust is being abused by expanded match.
P.S.
1. How many of you out there know that if you log in to your campaign and click on one of the ad variations while working on your ad copy, you’ll be charged for a click?
2. If you know this, can you tell me where Google warns you that this is the case.
Hi Scott – economists have a general rule that the higher the number of participants in an auction, the higher the value of the auction. The broader the match, the more participants. So Broad Match is good for Google, as you point out.
I’m not at all convinced by your Post Scripts. I can and have been clicking on adverts in the AdWords User Interface, and the AdWords Editor without a fee, for many years. One of the experiments that I regularly repeat is to use rare keywords to detect geotargeting. The only clicks that I get charged for are those from adverts shown in the search engine. I’d love to know what experiments you conducted. I’d be astonished if I’ve missed something that significant for more than five years.