Phrase match will display your ads whenever somebody search for your keywords even if with another word. For example let's say you have an ad for "red shoes" Anytime somebody makes a search containing red shoes, your ad will display. So it will display even if the search is buy red shoes, sell red shoes, red shoes reviews.....etc. The exact match will display only the ad if the search is limited to your keywords. So if you are bidding on [red shoes], your ad will display only if I search red shoes, but not if I search buy red shoes.
So if I was per say using this keyword tool to judge how many searches in a given month which one would be more accurate if just searches normally not using any punctuation and just uses keywords. Thank you a lot btw! Travis
the Exact match is more accurate but, by the way, based on my experience, these tools are never so accurate. They just gire you a rough idea
Phrase match will burn your pocket $ as it's too general and exact match will only drive potential customers to your adwords.