I have noticed Google will trigger a broad match for some keywords, when in other ad groups an exact match exists. It seems to me Google would always show the exact match ad first, before any broad matches. I've seen this time and time again, not to be the case. I assume they do this because of one of the following reasons; 1 - Google is showing the keyword which makes them the most money 2 - Google is showing the keyword which has a better conversion rate 3 - Google is showing the keyword which has a higher position in the SERPs Am I correct in this observation, and if so does anyone know why this happens?
There is no preference given to matching types that I know of..there is alot of variables when your talking about what is showing, and what is not..here are a couple of potential reasons: 1- Google is rewarding the keyword that has a better QS, which includes a blend of your CTR, CPC, ad relevancy, landing page relevancy, etc.. 2-Your daily budget could be exhausted in the ad group, thus preventing that keyword not to show. this has nothing to do with your organic SERPs, conversion rates, or what is making the most money for Google.
Thanks for the reply. I gotta say though, it seems when you go through the point of making a keyword an exact match to show a specific ad, that google would want to show that ad first, over a different ad. In other words, by adding an exact match, I have already determined what I want shown, regardless of what Google thinks is better. The ad groups are in the same capaign and therefor have the same daily budget. We have ads groups defined for keywords accounting and other groups for cpa, and google sees accounting as a broad match of cpa. Therefore this is resulting in ads with language targeting accountants being shown when we have exact match defined with ads targeting CPA. This seems counter-intuitive to showing relevant ads, which should be the real goal.
Google DOES show the exact match first, if you have one, then a phrase match, again if you have one, then broad match, if applicable. Your bid, conversion rate or anything to do with the SERPs has nothing to do with it. In fact, it is generally a good idea to bid more on exact and phrase than on broad matches. Since you don't know the exact search term someone uses in their search, you don't know what keyword triggers your ad, except of course your exact matches. Of course, as you say, the goal is to show as relevant ads as possible. But it is your keywords that trigger ads. I'm not sure from your posts, but it sounds like you are bidding on one-word keywords, which I strongly do not recommend. Also, run a search query report. It can be a gold mine of potential keywords you haven't thought about, including negatives. Only problem is that it shows only terms for which people click on your ad.
Hi Lucid. Actually the new google adwords interface has an option to see exactly what search strings are triggering ads. Just go to the Keywords tab, and you will see a button for "Show Search terms". From that you can see the exact search terms that are triggering "all" or "selected" keywords. This is how I know Google is showing a broad match for a search string that I have an exact match for. I'm also going to assume this has been the case for some time, and it's only now that we can see the exact strings that are triggering ads that we can actually see it happening. Here are two examples; - Search string "accountant website content" triggered a phrase match for "accountant website" when we had an exact match for "accountant website content" in a different group - Search string "web site for accountants" triggered a broad match for "cpa web design" when we had an exact match for "web site for accountants" in another ad group
Yeah, that's a new feature in the new interface. I keep forgetting about it, my head is still in the old interface. A couple comments about it from my observations. First, it doesn't seem to be accurate. An exact keyword shows 100 impressions, yet the search terms show less impressions. Those should be the same. The clicks seem to match however. Second, Adwords is a huge and complicated beast. I too see impressions on keywords searched for which are in another group or campaign. But the vast majority of impressions are given to the proper keywords. One possible reason is that the budget on the other campaign was exhausted and the next best keyword triggered an ad. Another reason, as I said, Adwords is a huge algorithm and given all the possible permutations and the amount of data cannot be expected to be 100% correct all the time.
In your first example, the phrase match is triggered because the account website was searched - therefore [account website content] would never be triggered anyway. In your 2nd example, maybe the campaign that had the exact match in, had been exhausted? Google trigger the keyword in this order: Exact, Phrase, Broad. Odd times it looks like it triggers them in a different order, but there's always a reason why when you really look into it. What I do is split match types into their own campaign, and this way you can budget better... i.e a higher budget for Exact as that's the business end (or should be) of your Adwords account.
In my first example, the search string was accountant website content. Google showed the phrase match "accountant website" when in fact I had an exact match of [accountant website content] in another ad group. To address the second point, these keywords are in different ad groups of the same campaign. The budget is set at the campaign level, and therefore it is not a case of one budget being exhausted. I would have to agree with you that it would make the most sense for google to trigger keywords in the order of Exact, Phrase, Broad, but that is not what is happening.
Hi Jville, I thought Google was meant to trigger the Exact match first, but I'ma regular in the official adwords support forum and there are quite a few instances of people with large data sets saying sometimes the broads will get triggered - adwords employees responses are that it's a glitch. I have a lot of phrases to manage and a large data set but I never see these results, as just as muchacho does I separate out my broads into a different campaign - I then insert my exact matches into this broad campaign as negative exact matches, so they're never triggered by the broad
That's what I sometimes do. The downside to this, is that odd times if the budget for your exact campaigns run out, the broad/phrase would 'pick up the batton' until the following day. This won't happen if negatives are added. I guess it's 2 sides to the coin in terms of positive/negative and so long as the budgets for Exact is enough, there's no problem.
Thank you. We do have a large data set (about 3,000 keywords across 30 groups). The idea to use keywords from one ad group as negatives in another ad group to help force the display of my targeted ads did cross my mind, and I will probably implement that even though I'm not excited about the added overhead. I was partly hoping to find someone else this has happened to as I'm not sure my boss is fully believing my analysis. It's of course important for anyone who has seen this, to make sure they have the correct time frame for the data. In other words, if you add an exact match, you want to make sure the time frame you are viewing doesn't show before that exact match was added. Anyway, thanks for confirming at least that others have also reported this and that Google apparently acknowledged the glitch. That alone makes me feel a little better.
I like the idea I have seen in this thread, of setting the broad matches into a separate campaign with a different budget. My only concern, and it's probably not a big concern, is the high rate with which people have typos and misspelling in their search strings. Things like websight in place of website, and the transposition of letters such as webstie, and such. Similar to my original observation, I have also seen broad matches shown that I had better broad matches for. For example, I have seen things like cpa web site trigger a broad match for accounting web site, instead of a better broad match I had of the plural version cpa web sites I can't say that is the exact example, but I have seen cases like that. I know Google is smart enough to recognize singular and plural versions of words, so it would seem they would display these better broad matches, in cases like this. Have you seen anything like that?
This is why as soon as you see people are spelling a keyword incorrectly, you add it to your Exact Campaign. Providing it gets enough searches it will trigger it.
Exactly, and keep on top of your negatives in your broad campaign - the new See Search Terms option in the new UI makes this particularly easy. By large data sets I'm talking about hundreds of thousands of KWs (the account I'm talking about is around the 400k mark). Tell your boss it does happen, although it is quite rare, and Google say it is a 'glitch'