best+widget (will [best widget] match this?)
" best widget" (with a space before and/or after the phrase)
"best widget" (with 2 spaces between any 2 words)
'best widget' (single quotes instead of the common double quotes)
Google seems to count these as all being separate/different. I'm just trying to add anything and everything that might get me some extra clicks ... so do I go ahead and bid on all of these?
For example, I'm seeing a lot of search phrases that contain a space either before and/or after the phrase. Any obvious typo. But do I need to bid on [ best widget], [best widget ] etc to match these, or does [best widget] match them all?
2. ["nice widget"] ~ [nice widget]
3. best+widget ~ "best widget"
4. " best widget" (with a space before and/or after the phrase) ~ "best widget"
5. "best widget" (with 2 spaces between any 2 words)~ "best widget"
6. 'best widget'? best widget?
The best way is to test them out.
A)I believe what Limit is talking about in the 2nd post are leading, trailing and redundant spaces.
If you tried to use all those possibilities, you would have seen them consolidate into one exact or phrase match. Google trims any leading, trailing and redundant spaces. As well they should, most programming languages have some sort of function that accomplishes this and it behooves the programmer to use it.
So the short answer is no, you do not need to include any spaces except the single space separating words.
In fact Google even discourages separating certain words in phrases with the advice:
Don't include these variations: misspellings (french cusine), capitalization (French cuisine), incorrect spacing (french cui sine), hyphens (french-cuisine).
Now the example they use here is poor in my opinion and I cannot agree 100% with some of this advice:
1) While Google will suggest proper spellings for some words, it can't be counted on to properly interpret every mis-spelling properly. I personally don't care to lose out on clicks because Google doesn't have every possible mis-spelling of every proper name and technical or unique term in its database. Somehow I manage to get impressions and clicks on most of the mis-spellings that I include in my keyword list
2) Agreed, all keywords should be lower case.
3) That example is too vague. When exactly is spacing "incorrect"? Is Google guaranteed to interpret "super market" & "supermarket" as the same word? Will "underwear", "under wear", "underware" and "under ware" all be considered the same, if we group Google suggestions #1 & #3 together?
We can get much more obscure than these obvious examples too. What about "chainfire book 9" and "chain fire book 9"? The answer is no, if only the former were included in your keyword list and the latter is searched on, you will not show up for using either phrase or broad match for "chainfire book 9". That's particularly irksome, because in this instance, there were also some broad matches that should have picked up the slack. At least until a couple of weeks ago they would have. All this suggests that I need to maximize my keyword list rather than cut it down as Google keeps suggesting.
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B) Limit, in your first post, I take it you're talking about the searcher's query, not your keyword list. Google will strip all Boolean matching options the searcher uses plus any punctuation and quotes for AdWords. It's a different story for the SERPs however. This is one of the few instances where Google gives us an edge in keyword matching in AdWords of late.
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Myself, I'm still fighting with the "The keywords in your account are nearing an unmanageable size" message with no resolution in sight. I added keywords slowly and manually then suddenly one day this message appears. Deleting 10,000 keywords fails to make it disappear.
For both Limit, myself and other advertisers, Google should publish precise matching guidelines, especially if they want to cut down on the number of keywords in their database.
I want the ominous red flag at the top of my account summary page to go away, but not at the expense of compromising my campaign because of the lack of clear guidelines. If there is some physical limit, I wish to know what it is. AdWords Support was unable to provide any answers.
AWA, what will happen when I actually reach "the unmanageable size" and how will I know?
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I'm not directing this at Rocky, but the answer should not be to experiment with the precious few impressions we seem to be allowed of late to determine what constitutes a match. Instead we should have very clear and extensive examples of what will produce a match in AdWords queries. There is no reason for matching rules to be any sort of secret, it's to no ones advantage.
patient2all
