With broad match I was under the impression that any combination of the keywords, with or without other text before, after or interspersed would trigger an ad. With the expanded matching I understand that this will now increase to include plurals, synonyms etc. which is fine. What worries me is that it does not seem to require all of the words in my keyword phrase to be included in the search query. For instance if I bid on - large round blue widgets - I would not expect my add to show for the search [widgets] nor for [blue] I run a search query report daily at the moment but find it of little use. It is very good at telling me what search phrases triggered clicks on my exact matches but this is no more useful than yesterday's weather forecast. With phrase and broad match I seem to get almost exclusively "other unique queries". In the few that do give a search phrase however I have noticed several single words where all my keywords are at least two words and mainly 3 or more. I have started adding a quantity of negative exact matches to counter this but it is not the whole solution. For example if I bid on - large green widgets - I can add the following negative matches -[large], -[green], -[widgets]. this would not however stop my ad appearing for the search query [large greens] nor [green widgets] and I have to question how it would determine whether or not to show for [large green pencils]. Is anyone else having a problem with this and if so have you found an acceptable solution without completely missing out all broad matches?
As broad match does, as you say, also include synonyms, it doesn't necessarily have any of the words in your keyword phrase, but does include what the algorithm considers to mean the same sort of thing. Which can be very very broad.
I see broad match show ads for keywords that are not even in my broad matched list. Broad match is very, very, very broad. The key is to use TONS of negetives and migrate to exact match when it makes sense.
Broad match is extremely broad - check your Search Query Report for more stats on that. For example, it used to be that the broad matched keyword BMG Music Service, you'll also show up on Columbia House (not sure if that match is still around, though). Most matches aren't that broad, but it's possible.
Thank you for that, it's what I feared. I have some campaigns running in the US with identical ones in Canada. The campaigns in the US are relatively easy to to manage with a 3 - 5% CTR from the outset and a good selection of exact and phrase match hits. Canada seems to be a totally different story. I have to watch very closely in the early stages and cut back drastically on broad matches that appear to be hoovering up huge numbers of impressions. It would be easier if I just cut out all the broad matches in Canada but funnily enough these are the ones with the highest CTR. When I write a laser targeted ad with the keyword in the title and display url and text that is giving me a CTR of over 6% in the US I struggle to get 1% CTR in Canada - and barely 0.5% on the exact matches?!