red widget
red widgets
"red widget circle"
"red widgets square"
-blue
-green
If I do a search for red widget triangle - my ad should show up because I bid on red widget which is a phrase match, and yet I'm not appearing for these searches.
After this became a problem, I added the broad phrases:
red widget
red widgets
Which have been approved for quite some time. (to be honest, I don't have the time to check on all the combos very often, so this could have been an issue for a couple weeks)
I'm still not showing up for the search red widget triangle.
I've also noticed with a lot of other search queries, that if you bid on a two word broadmatch term, you will show for related searches, but not for longer string searches that contain those terms.
Any light shed on this problem would be much appreciated.
There have been a number of threads over the last two weeks about this very subject. I was having the same problem and, having identified it in this forum, the problem seemed to go away. It's hard to tell because after the problem originated I immediately created ad groups to cover the most important keywords.
The original idea of "broad match" was exactly as you have stated. You put in a search term and every phrase that includes that term is supposed to include your ad minus the negative words. This was not happening. Is it happening now?
No one has brought this up in a week or so. Maybe someone else has some insight.
Hopefully it's just a temp glich, and I choose the day to check on all my terms when it isn't quite working right.
I've been hoping for 2 weeks and guess what? yep still hoping. I've had them go through my account for weeks trying to sort this out and still no answers.
I would say phrase match is a good as exact match but my exact match keywords show more than my phrase math terms at the momment.
