A few days ago I started my first Adwords campaign. I provide training workshops in a specialized field. People looking for my service search on "specialized field training" or "specialized field workshops" or a couple of other variations. The 2-word phrase that describes my specialized field would appear in almost any search on this topic. So my keyword is "specialized field" as a phrase match (that's not the only one, but the others aren't relevant here). If I am reading the Adwords help correctly, my ads should show up for any search that contains the phrase "specialized field" plus any additional words before or after.
But, that's not the way it's working, you don't see my ads at all when you search for "specialized field workshops" etc. And I don't think it's that my ads are getting overlooked in favor of better-performing ones, because searches on relevant 3-word phrases don't have any ads showing at all.
(I'm avoiding broad match, because it would be silly to have my ads appear on searches for "football field," "force field," etc.)
Given the tiny size of my business, it isn't a big deal right now - I just went ahead and added the 3-word phrases to my keyword list. But hopefully my business will grow to a point where it will matter, so I am wondering, why didn't the phrase match work as expected?
Thanks,
debvh
By the way, I started adwords because my year-old site was about zillionth in Google for relevant keywords. 5 days later it's showing up in the first 1-2 pages! What's up with that? Not that I'm complaining...
I have selected "red widgets" in quotes as my keyword. According to Google, that means that my ads should show up on searches for the phrase "red widgets" by itself or with additional words preceeding or following the phrase. But in practice, my ads show up for searches on "red widgets" but not "big red widgets" or "red widgets catalog." Why is this, and what can I do about it?
Thanks in advance,
debvh
I have selected "red widgets" in quotes as my keyword. According to Google, that means that my ads should show up on searches for the phrase "red widgets" by itself or with additional words preceeding or following the phrase. But in practice, my ads show up for searches on "red widgets" but not "big red widgets" or "red widgets catalog." Why is this, and what can I do about it?
debvh, this question has seen much discussion in the past - but the very short answer is that broad match or "phrase match' are not intended to show your ad on every possible variation of your keywords. Rather, they are intended to show only those variations which are predicted to be relevant to our users, based on many different factors.
To put it another way, your ad may show for variations - but is not guaranteed to do so.
Excerpting from the AdWords Help center ( [adwords.google.com...] ), with bolding mine:
Broad Match - This is the default option. If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your ads will appear when a user's query contains tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms...Phrase Match - If you enter your keyword in quotation marks, as in "tennis shoes," your ad will appear when a user searches on the phrase tennis shoes, in this order, and possibly with other terms in the query...
In terms of how to show for desired variations, I'd advise that if there are variations to your broad or phrase matched keywords that are especially important to you, then it would be best to add these variations to your keyword list as keywords in their own right.
AWA
Sorry, I didn't mean to beat a dead horse.
I certainly didn't mean to imply that, debvh. I only said it as a heads-up that a search of past threads would net you more substantial details.
Regarding searching this site, our forum moderator eWhisper once posted a tip on an easy way to search the AdWords Forum on WebmasterWorld. Just do a Google search like this:
forum81 +plus keywords focused on what you're interested in.
So, in this case, you might start with something like:
forum81 "broad match"
In my earlier post I also failed to see that you are quite new to posting on the forum. Welcome! ;)
AWA
[edited by: AdWordsAdvisor at 2:07 am (utc) on Aug. 11, 2005]
Now that I've poked around the topic a bit, I realize that the following paragraph is not going to add anything new to the discussion, but,
<rant>
UGH! ANYONE can come up with a list of obvious search phrases. I wanted to use phrase matching to account for the prefixes and suffixes that I DIDN'T think of. It is hard to believe that you are trying to make the ads as relevant as possible when the other ads that appear with mine are wildly off-topic (analogous to seeing ads for dog walkers on a search for hot dogs). And what's up with those "buy nuclear physics on ebay" ads?! I was annoyed by those as a searcher long before I ever thought of becoming an advertizer.
</rant>
I'm confused about how budgeting plays into all of this. My keywords are very cheap, and I'm spending nowhere near my daily budget. Would increasing the daily budget increase the likelihood of my ads appearing on more than just an exact match?
...Would increasing the daily budget increase the likelihood of my ads appearing on more than just an exact match?
No, not really debvh. the primary thing your daily budget influences is how often your ad appears.
(And although you didn't ask, your Maximum CPC primarily influences in what position your ads appear.)
I'd really suggest using a comprehensive and well thought out list of the keywords you know that you'd like to appear on, used as broad or phrase matches, and supported with an equally comprehensive list of negative keywords.
Then, I'd rely on the system to show your ads for variations on those keywords that are predicted to be relevant.
AWA
