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Is Google’s New Matching Behavior that Big of a Deal?
April 18th, 2012 | Add a Comment
We all know that Google is constantly rolling out new bells and whistles that mostly pertained to get more clicks and budget out of the advertisers budget. With that said, their latest innovation which expands the traditional “phrase” and [exact] match rules will now include misspellings, singular/plural forms, stemmings, accents, abbreviations and other variants <– (this one needs to be monitored).
According to Google, “based on our research and testing, we believe these changes will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers.” They also go one to say that “People aren’t perfect spellers or typists. At least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling, and the longer the query, the higher the rate.”
For those in the industry who already have misspellings, variants, abbreviations, etc.. this will not affect them too much. However, for those who are not taking advantage of these variables, they will see an increase in traffic and of course SPEND. Google’s new Matching Behavior could be a win for advertisers who might be missing out on potential traffic and conversions from these variations, but it ultimately put more money into Google’s Cafeteria Budget.
However Google does offer advertisers to “opt-out” of this controlled feature. According to Google “If you don’t want the potential for more clicks and prefer to maintain the current matching behavior in your campaign, you’ll still have that option. In the coming weeks, we’ll begin rolling out controls which will allow you to adjust your keyword matching options. Once they’re live, log in to AdWords and select the campaign settings tab. Under “Advanced settings” select Keyword matching options”
In conclusion:
This new option is not that big of a deal for advertisers who already have phrase match keywords with all of these variations. One could wonder that Google is trying to get more spend out of advertisers who are getting smarter and not using broad match and expanded broad match and just relying on specific phrase and exact match terms that are profitable. Just one word of advice, make sure you closely monitor the search queries, especially those being served under “other variants”. To be safe, make sure to initially “UN-CHECK” this option if you feel your keyword groups are already optimized.
Filed under: Featured, Google Adwords, Paid Search in General · Tags: adwords, good adwords matching, Google Adwords, keyword matching