AdWords Changes Keyword Matching

This past week Google made an announcement that close variant keyword matching will be applied to all ‘Exact’ and ‘Phrase’ match keywords. Starting in late September, Google will be removing the option to opt out of close variant matching. This isn’t an earth shattering announcement on the scale of Panda or Hummingbird, but it’s still noteworthy nonetheless.

Close variant matching was introduced in 2012 and according to Google advertisers have seen strong results from it with advertisers receiving an average of 7 percent more exact and phrase match clicks. For most campaigns this change will have no effect as the default setting for campaigns is to include close variant matching.

An example of close variant would be an advertiser targeting the exact match keyword [car dealer]. The ad would show up for these additional terms:
– car dealers
– car daeler
– car da ler
– car dealer’s
– car dealership

This move to force close variant matching could be a sign of a general trend towards mobile and voice search. These search platforms have much higher instances of misspellings and typos due to garbled voice recognition or cumbersome typing on mobile devices.

There benefits of close variant matching is that it takes away the need to create an extensive keyword list of misspellings and increases overall traffic volume for exact and phrase match keywords. The downside to it is that the inability to truly control exactly what words trigger an ad does take some control away from the advertiser. However, there is a work around this issue. You can build a list of negative keywords of misspellings for variant terms that you don’t want to show up for.

To learn more about how close variant matching might effect your campaign you can contact your Integrated PPC strategist. You can depend on us to stay on top of changes in the digital marketing landscape.