For such a critical part of your Google Ads campaigns, there is often limited knowledge of the importance of keyword match types. A match type is a way that you set up a keyword to tell Google how you want it to match with a search query. It’s not an obvious setting when you set up your keywords, but once you understand match types, your campaigns will benefit greatly from them. There are three different types of match types: broad match, phrase match and exact match. Throughout this post, we’ll explain keyword match types with reference to “blue shirts” as an example to help you understand the difference between the match types, and how they impact when your search ads are shown.

Note: In February 2021 Google Announced changes to the Phrase Match and Broad Match Modifier match types. This blog has been updated to reflect the new changes which have started to take effect across accounts. Read our blog post about the change here.

Let’s say you have some keywords set up for some shirts you’re selling. Some potential search queries might be “ black shirts ”, “ blue and black shirt ”, “ black shirts brisbane ”, “ buy blue shirt online ” and potentially even “ blue shirts ”. Whether your ad is shown will depend on the match type you have selected for your keywords.

Here’s an explanation of each of the four different match types.

Identifier: keyword text only, no identifiers

Pros: lots of traffic, typically cheaper too

Cons: lots of irrelevant traffic and potential wasted spend

Caution: monitor your search queries and traffic ruthlessly. Negative keywords are your friend.

Broad Match Modifier [Will not be supported from July 2021]:

Broad match modifier keywords, indicated by a plus sign (+) in front of each word, mean that each word must be included in a search query. It is a great match type to use because if your keyword is blue shirts you want people that are actually searching for blue shirts. You don't want people that are typing in black shirt because if you wanted that you’d have that as its own keyword. You can use the modifier (the plus sign) on all or some of the words within your keyword. For example +blue +shirts would indicate that blue and shirts need to be in the query. +blue shirts means that blue has to be, but shirts doesn’t.

By using broad match modifiers, you are also opening yourself up to lots of variants of those terms. If my keyword is +Blue +Shirts, my ad could be triggered by a search query for ‘blue and white shirts in Australia’ or ‘where can I buy blue shirts’ or ‘where can I buy a shirt that is blue’.

The above examples are quite simple to understand as they are ‘short-tail’ keywords (only two words). When you delve into ‘long-tail keywords’, you are increasing the specificity of the keyword. If your keyword was +blue +shirts +in +Brisbane each of these words need be in the search query for your ad to be triggered. 


Doing this will really restrict your potential traffic so, you want to be careful when using broad match modifier on long-tail keywords. You might want to remove the modifier on the ‘in’ word for that example and so you would have it on +Blue +shirts in +Brisbane. This would mean your ad will be triggered by someone searching for ‘blue shirts brisbane’, ‘blue shirts in brisbane’, ‘blue shirts around brisbane’.


Identifier: keyword text, with a plus sign (+) appended to the start each word, e.g. +blue +shirt

Pros: More control of which search queries your ad is triggered by

Cons: still fairly broad and does require close monitoring

Caution: when using with long-tail keywords, strategically place your modifier on the most important words

Phrase Match:

As of February 2021 phrase match keywords, indicated by double quotation marks (“), will start to incorporate the same matching behaviours a Broad Match. Modifier keywords. These keywords will show for searches that have the same meaning as your keyword. One of the most exciting things about this change is that the order of the words in the search query will also be taken into consideration. An example of this might be if you were searching for travel options between destinations. A keyword for "flights Sydney to Melbourne" will cover searches only for that direction of travel and won't appear for people searching for flights from Melbourne to Sydney.

Phrase match keywords are a great way to keep your traffic relevant. You have greater control of the type of traffic that you show for with phrase match because it will only show for search terms that have the same or similar meaning to our keywords.

Identifier: keyword text, with double quotation marks surrounding the whole keyword (“), e.g. “blue shirt”

Pros: greater control of search traffic

Cons: Potential wastage with irrelevant traffic, monitor search terms and add negatives as you see them

Caution: with longer tail keywords, you can highly restrict the volume of traffic.

Note: you cannot combine phrase match with broad match in one keyword. For example “Blue Shirts In Brisbane” is acceptable, “Blue Shirts” in Brisbane is not

Exact Match:

The last match type is exact match. Exact match is indicated by square brackets around the keyword and means that the search query must match the keyword exactly. It’s also important to note that close variants are excluded from this rule. If someone makes a common spelling mistake or adds a plural it will still be triggered by an exact match (unless you specifically exclude the variants in your negative keywords). To continue with our example, [blue shirts] will only be triggered by search queries like ‘blue shirts’, ‘blu shirts’, and ‘blue shirt’.

Pros: the greatest amount of control over when your ads will be triggered

Cons: Could severely limit the amount of traffic you can generate.

Caution: You will want to be sure you are using the right exact match keywords if you choose to use only exact match in your campaign. This will require thorough testing (typically best conducted with broad match modifiers and phrase match) to see which keywords convert before using exact match.

Conclusion

There are three different match types for keywords in your Google Search Campaign. These are broad match, phrase match and exact match. We highly recommend using a variety of match types for the best results in your campaign. The use of match types plays a strategic role in the overall campaign set up, so if you’re unsure exactly what is the best combination for you, or how you can best take advantage of match types, please get in touch with us.