The short term impact will be high as expanded broad match terms encroach on more precise campaigns. However, this effect will diminish as less precisely targeted phrases fail to hit the 1% CTR and get disabled.
My biggest problem with this is the long term impact on the relevancy of Google AdWords ads. Listings are going to be crammed with potentially irrelevant ads. If relevancy falls significantly consumers will stop looking to the ads and we all lose out.
For instance. I am promoting 'Smiths Widgets', [smiths widgets] is my keyphrase and my ad says 'Buy Smiths Widgets' - I'm doing everything right.
I could lose position to someone else promoting Jones Widgets using the broad match phrase 'jones widgets'.
Also, broad match decides that 'Browns Widgets', 'Williams Widgets', etc are also similar terms.
What if each manufacturers widgets are incompatible with each other? For instance, VHS & Betamax, DVD+R and DVD-R..
The listings are crammed with incompatible (irrelevant) ads and my ad gets pushed off the top unless I increase my bids. Also, the consumer gets confused and loses faith in the relevancy of search results.
Thinking laterally, should the position ranking formula be tweaked to reward exact match terms?
For instance:
Broad match = RANK
Phrase match = RANK * 1.1
Exact match = RANK * 1.2
Col
If the ads are irrelevant, surfers won't click on the ads
If surfers won't click on the ad, its CTR will go down.
If the CTR goes down, the average pos. of the ad goes down
If their avg position goes down, your problems are solved.
Wait for some more time to see if there are any changes in your and your competitors' ad positions.
The Cream will float to the top
i agree with the above poster.
It will diminish, but not disappear. New advertisers start on AdWords every day. Each new campaign can temporarily blur the relevancy of listings until they fail to hit 1% and their broad match phrases disappear. Then another new advertiser turns up..
So, in the long term there will be a general decrease in the relevancy of ad listings.
Col
For example: I search for 'BMW cars'
I click the top result, which shows me that they do cheap
imported cars to UK spec. A cheap BMW, oh good :) I'll have a look at that...and click.
Hang on - but they only do Ford, Vauxall (GM), Honda and Nissan. Where's the BMW?
Broad match has caused this. The person bidding on Honda Cars has been broad matched to BMW cars! (And broadmatch does do this type of thing).
....then another person wants a BMW car and...and clicks...and before long an irrelevant advert is top of the pile :(
Which means your advert text is more critical than ever.
For instance if you offer scuba, snorkeling, horseback riding and fishing there is no room in the ad to list these so you put "activities" to cover them. Unfortunately when someone types in "your area scuba" the ad is not appearing when you have a broad match keyword for "your area". (forget the quotes).
GG has said they are investigating this however my impressions are going up even though we use more than 300 negative keywords - just not for the terms we want.
Someone suggested a few days ago that what we need is a new name for this service.
Restore broad match to what it was and then have a new category of "super broad match" and allow us to opt out. In many cases we need the advantages of the old broad match but not the liabilities and flaws of the "new" broad match.
This is not going to help those who's terms are being flooded with irelevant ads until the searchers stop clicking on them.
AdWordsAdvisor/GoogleGuy, please make a note of that for reference. I think that would help the advertiser, I think it would help the customer, I think it would help in SERP advertising relevancy. Everybody wins.
In investigating the other terms I was surprised to find that -your town scuba- was appearing for the broad term
-your town-.
The solution of course is to just add search terms for all the ones you really want ot reach. In my mind that was not the original purpose of broad match. The ad was supposed to appear for anything that our negative words did not eliminate. That is definately not the case now.
While trying to decide whether to put these additional words in phrase match or broad match I went to the AdWords descriptions of the terms. I had looked at them just a short while ago and don't rember this being in the description:
Expanded matching only applies to your broad-matched keywords. This feature doesn't affect keywords you've specified as phrase matches (keywords surrounded by double quotation marks) or exact matches (keywords surrounded by [] brackets). Also, expanded-match terms aren't included in our calculations for your minimum CTR requirement; therefore, they don't affect your ad's rank.
I think the part about expanded match not being part of the minimum CTR is new. It's probably come up before however I must have missed it although I've read enough posts from people saying the expanded match was hurting CTR.
Just as content match is an optional choice so should expanded match. If they aren't going to charge it against minimum CTR then there shouldn't be a problem.
My main question is - How do we know what broad match will now cover. Even though I've checked the terms mentioned above dozens of times in the last days they do not show up on the search term tool as additional terms or suggested terms.
Please restore broad match to what it was!
Although they say extended broad match will not affect your ad position, there is a *direct* effect on your ad's position due to greater competition. This *will* affect your CTR & therefore your position.
My main question is - How do we know what broad match will now cover?
I don't think anyone has a definitive answer to this yet (including Google!)
