When Google Adwords recently served a Rise Interactive paid search ad for the term “michael head internet sales,” we must admit, we were a little frustrated.  The term we were bidding on was “internet advertising company.”  Since we had the bid set for the broad keyword match type, Adwords felt that “michael head internet sales” was relevant.

To give you some more background, Google offers four different match types to help your paid search ads reach as many qualified Web browsers as possible. Advertisers set the match type that best fits their needs, with the hopes of serving their ads to be to the most qualified traffic possible. The four match types are:

Broad Match: The default setting for all keywords, which serves your ad whenever a user queries the words in your keyword phrase in any order.  This match type also serves ads for keyword synonyms that Adwords deems relevant.  For this reason, the Rise Adwords campaign served an ad for “michael head internet sales” when bidding on “internet advertising company.”

Phrase Match: Triggers Google to serve your paid ad only when a searcher uses the keyword phrase you are targeting in the same order you bid on it within the query. For example, if you are targeting “Internet Marketing,” your ad will appear for “Internet Marketing Specialists,” “Internet Marketing Agency,” etc.

Exact Match: Ensures your ad is only served when a searcher queries the exact keyword phrase you are targeting by itself. For example, if you are targeting “Internet Marketing,” your ad will be displayed only for that exact phrase. However, unlike phrase match, your ad will not be served if the searcher queries “Internet Marketing Agency” or some other variation of the targeted keyword phrase.

Negative Keywords: A list of keywords you do not want Google to serve your ads to when queried. For example, if your sell cruise vacations, a negative keyword may be “Tom,” as you do not want to pay for clicks on Web surfers looking for celebrity news.

For those looking to get the most exposure, broad match type seems to be the best option. However, Rise has encountered numerous situations in which Adwords has served impressions for irrelevant queries that have made many of us wary of using the broad match type.  We like the fact that Adwords will serve an impression if the words in the phrase appear in any order in the query, but do not like that Adwords also takes it upon itself to decide what may be a relevant term or phrase.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer a perfect match type that would help avoid situations like these. Rise would love for Adwords to stop thinking so much on behalf of its advertisers. Ideally, Rise would like a new match type developed that is a compromise between phrase and broad, only serving impressions when any iteration of the keywords in your phrase are present in any order within the query.   However, Adwords would never be allowed to decide if a term may be relevant to the phrase you are bidding on.

Have any of our readers dealt with similar frustrations? Do any of you have other ideas as to how Google can resolve this gap in service?

Tags: Adwords, Keyword Match Types, paid search, ppc

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 3:18 pm and is filed under Paid Search (PPC), Rise Interactive. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.