Lately I run a lot less exact matches, but use the filters Ganesh is linking to. This filter is just great and a very good way to add some negatives.

Just following up on my comments in LinkedIn so you have all of these in one place

Pretty interesting. Google is becoming a little more aggressive in what it will match against broad keywords. I think it is trying to get more clicks so is widening the net on what it deems related keywords. So I would usually lean towards phrase and exact. But this is good info to have.

Thanks for the post, a good read.

The problem I feel with adwords is that google will not tell you the exact search term and you need to tally it up with a third party programme to see real click through results.

As an example I used to pitch for anything to do with “sales trainer” or “sales coach”, as that is what I do. My click through was fine but bounce rate was somewhat high and these are not cheap keywords. Looking at Google and the traffic i could view this as a successful programme but when you find out what people are really searching for, the story is somewhat different..

“sales of Reebok Trainers”
“trainer sales”

“Coach sales in nottingham”
“Sales of Coaches London”
“Coach Sales auctions”

So i now look for exact match terms and this my cost a little more but the quality is higher

For some campaigns creating 3 separate adgroups for each match type in combination with different negative match types to make sure you are accurately attributing the searchers’ queries to the appropriate match type is a great strategy.

Even if it means more time and work to put it together.

Although it won’t always be feasible for all campaigns because of scalability issues, I completely agree with you on this.

In my post however, I was talking more about semantics than structure. Specifically how certain exact match keywords can mean different things. And since negative keywords can’t help you in cases like these, your CTR can suffer and consequently your Quality Score.

Creating 3 different adgroups as you mentioned might help you identify this problem faster because you’ll have your exact matched keywords in their own adgroups.

Still, you’ll have to keep an eye out to make sure that your exact matched keywords are relevant and not killing your Quality Score with low CTRs.

Thanks for your comment and for stopping by!

Glad you found the post helpful. Quality score can definitely be a tricky beast to tame.

Don’t hesitate to get in touch if you ever have any specific questions – would be my pleasure to help out!

I know dangerously little about quality score metrics… so I really appreciate this post!

Exact match is not always a surefire strategy that will bring you the most targeted traffic. Semantics plays a role where an exact matched keyword as in the examples I gave will not always be relevant for every user that searches exactly those terms because they may be looking for very different things.

On the other hand I’m not saying that exact matched keywords are bad or even dangerous, just that because of certain keywords’ generic nature or double meanings, they can result in a low CTR and consequently a lower quality score.

You are also right about keywords and ad copy going hand in hand when it comes to CTR. For this reason some exact matched keywords can result in a low CTR especially when you have a very targeted ad copy. Which in turn will cause your quality score to suffer.

Some exact matched keywords like [buy nintendo games] may not always bring in targeted traffic if you only sell games for the Wii and not for other Nintendo systems. You’ll be able to spot this by a low CTR especially if you mention in your ads that you sell Nintendo games for the Wii.

In this case, you’ve made sure to mention what you’re selling in your ads and are using an exact matched keyword that appears relevant, but may prove to get queried by people both looking for games for the Wii and games for other Nintendo platforms. So at best some of your traffic will be relevant and some will not – this is what you have to look out for.

If you have more irrelevant impressions on [buy nintendo games] ie. Low CTR on high volume of impressions, then you have a problem with this word and need to stop the CTR bleed before your quality score suffers.

Hope this helps clarify the point I’m trying to make with exact matched keywords not always being relevant.

Thanks for your comment and feedback!