The beta launch of Google’s ‘Automatic Keyword Matching’ (AKA: Ultra-Broad Match) and the ensuing reaction (here, here, here, and here ) makes it a great time to talk about Broad Match and the role Google and PPC Management should play in your campaigns.

Why Match Types

Match types exist because it’s impractical to define or purchase keywords/phrases for every search query that users are going to use when looking for your goods or services. And in theory as well as reality it makes sense for the search engines to use both their deep data and algorithms to help us avoid having to specify 97 versions of ‘organic dog food’ in our keyword lists.

The problem is that the reality is not entirely as good as the theory. The Broad Match baby comes with a lot of bath water – queries that are too far from the keyword in meaning or intent and therefore are inevitably or too frequently unprofitable.

But most people don’t have the time, skill, or tools to drain the tub properly by reducing the use of Broad Match over time and expanding their use of Phrase, Exact, and Negative matches.

And that’s the problem. It’s not that Broad Match or even Ultra-Broad Match are bad per se (although Google could certainly continue to improve it in many ways) but that many advertisers rely on Broad Match too heavily for far too long.

How To Use Match Types

Broad Match (and possibly Ultra-Broad Match) should be used in many cases to test the waters. To find out which queries people are actually typing and determine how different queries convert. Armed with this information you can build a much more focused net of exact and phrase match keywords, and filter more specifically with negatives, so that the use and bids on broad match can be significantly reduced.

To be clear, there are many very valid uses of Broad Match; I’m not at all suggesting that it’s reasonable or desirable to eliminate all use of Broad Match.

I am suggesting that Exact and Phrase are vastly under-utilized, and that the bidding structure around multiple purchases of the same keywords are almost always out-of-whack. (More on the bidding implications of Match Type in a future post.)

Expanding Match Types

It’s good to see Google expanding the ways that they use their data and algorithms to drive traffic. Unlike many in the PPC community I’m not against innovations like ‘Automatic Keyword Matching’ – there are new and small advertisers for whom this type of capability is a good match.

But I do think that for larger and more advanced advertisers Google should go the other direction – exposing more options within the Match Type controls.

• It would be great to have 3-5 grades of Broad Match with some control or indication of what kinds of matches are supported.
• It would be great to have a non-linear Phrase Match (to purchase and query that includes the exact words you buy but not necessarily in that order or without extraneous words).
• It’s a crime that Match Type is not available as a variable to be handed back in the target URL string so better analysis on the impact of Match Type can be done in search analytics.

Match types are one of the most important and least effectively utilized of the controls available in paid search. Google needs to do more with them, but so do most paid search managers.