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Paid Search

How will Google’s ‘Near Match’ change affect your Google Adwords Campaigns?

By Paid Search, SEO

Paid Search Marketing from Tyler ConsultantsGoogle recently announced the your ‘exact match’ and ‘phrase match’ keyword phrases in Google Adwords paid search platform will be matched with ‘variation’ or ‘near match’ keyword phrases starting in September 2014.  In this post we will look at what this means and how it will affect your Google Adwords campaigns.

So What exactly is being changed by Google?

In a recent blog post Google announced that from next month it will no longer be possible to bid on exact match and phrase match keyword phrases without including other very similar keyword phrases.

In their post, Google advised that more than 7% of all Google searches contain a misspelling.  The example they used was:

if you advertise for the exact match keyword “kid scooters”, Google will show your add for the search terms “kid scooters”, “kid’s scooter”, or “kids scooters”.

Currently ‘exact match’ means that if you had the keyword phrase ‘kid scooters’ your ad would only appear if the searcher keyed in ‘kid scooters’ and not for any variation.

So is the change good news or bad news?

As expected the official Google statement is positioning the change as great news for their advertisers as they can expect many more clicks as a result of their ad being triggered by more search phrases.  It also means more money for Google of course and as yet it is unclear whether the variation keywords will have the same conversion rate as the original keyword.

What seems clear to us is that the change is undoubtedly good news for Google but it might not be beneficial to their advertisers.

The change affects both exact match and phrase match keyword phrases

As we explained above Google will be showing your  exact match ad’s and your phrase match ad’s for more keyword phrases as a result of the change.  As an example if you were bidding a phrase match keyword phrase ‘black shoes’ then your ad will be shown in all searched containing the phrase ‘black shoes’ such as ‘buy black shoes’, ‘mens black shoes’, ‘black shoes for sale’ which is fine if you are selling black shoes but your ad will also trigger for non productive searches such as ‘my black shoes hurt’, ‘my girlfriend hit me with her black shoes’ which are still going to cost you money but are unlikely to produce any income for you.

From September when Google activates the new ‘near match’ change  your ad will be triggered by many more variations which means your click costs are likely to increased or your budget will be used up more quickly.

Unfortunately there is not much that advertisers can do about it as Google have made the decision to implement the change.  What you can do however is review your Paid Search campaign and look to see if you can change any of your current phrase match keyword phrases to exact match keyword phrases.  You can also make use of negative keywords to try and make best use of your budget.

If you would like to know more about our paid search services or any aspect of search marketing please call us on 01273 328877