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.

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.

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