Adwords: Keyword Match Types
One factor that can be decisive in whether an Adwords campaign is a success or a failure is the type of keyword match.
What is the keyword match type?
Basically they are different options that we have to decide in which situations our ads will be displayed according to the keywords of our campaign.
There are currently 4 types of Keyword matching:
Wide: This is the default setting for keywords, the ad fires when the keyword or similar is included in the user's query.
For example if our keyword is dogs our ad will be displayed for inquiries such as: dog food, dog houses, dog grooming.
In some cases we need to reduce the possibility of which keywords our ad is displayed for and focus on well-defined keywords, due to campaign objectives or budget.
Exact: This is the most accurate method to target our keywords, the ads are only triggered when the user's query is exactly the same as the keyword ... these keywords are enclosed in brackets.
If our keyword is: [hotel for dogs], our ads will not be shown for any other queries.
Exact keywords are very useful when we know which queries we are converting the most to, then we can spend more on them alone.
Sentence: Phrase keywords are used to activate the ad every time exactly that phrase is included in a user's query, these types of keywords are enclosed in quotation marks.
If our keyword is «Rent apartment», our ads will be displayed for searches such as: rent recoleta apartment, rent palermo apartment, etc.
Negative: This option is used to eliminate certain keywords for which we are not interested in showing our ad, to use them a minus sign is added in front of the keyword.
For example if we have a negative keyword -Belgrano and we use the above phrase keyword «Rent apartment», our ad is not activated for queries that include Belgrano.
This is very useful for when we do not offer services in certain areas or there are certain types of products related to our main product that we do not have.
The 4 basic keyword types can also be combined to create sophisticated match forms that best suit our needs.