red widgets
"red widgets"
[red widgets]
I always assumed that the broadmatch will catch any search term that include red and widgets.
But searching for:
red widgets and
or
rusty red widgets
my ad does not appear. Neither do the 10 or so ads of my competitors. Only 1 or 2 ads appear.
I'm doing something stupid here? The broadmatch should catch it, surely? The word rusty is contained in the ad...
I always assumed that the broadmatch will catch any search term that include red and widgets.
This is actually a fairly common misconception, OlRedEye.
Contrary to popular conception, broad match is not actually an assurance that your ads will show for any and all variations of your broad matched keyword.
Rather, broad matching means that your ads will show for all variations that are predicted to be relevant to the actual search that was done by the user.
This is briefly mentioned in the AdWords Help Center, on this page: [adwords.google.com...]
Excerpting from that page, with the bolding added by me:
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...
So, if there are variations of your 'base' keywords for which you wish your ad to appear, it is a good practice to add them as keywords in their own right.
AWA
So now I add another kw: rusty red widgets. But then this broad match won't catch the search term old and rusty red widgets....
Current broad matched keyword is red widgets. Search for
red widgets and
doesn't bring it up. And is ignored in the search as per G. Something smells.
I'll save AWA some typing and tell you the sage advice continually offered here about keywords:
"If you want to be seen for a particular variation of a keyword, include it in your keyword list."
old and rusty...
rusty old..
old rusty..
old with rust..
etc.
Also, look at the list provided of possible additional matches your keyword may appear for. You may not want to waste your money on some, hence the need for negative keywords:
sexy old rusty widgets....
You'd want to include -sexy in your keyword list then if you can't supply such.
---
If a chosen keyword is not showing at all, then try the "Ads Diagnostic Tool" under "Tools". It might give you some useful tip on why it's not showing.
Israel
Still grumbling about the apparent uselessness of broadmatch though... grumble, grumble
:)
If you have widgets red as your broad term and someone searches for rusty red widgets, then according to G support, your ad may not show for that broad term. This "problem" only seemed to affect any new adgroup that I set up after Aug 2005.
My solution: make sure that the order of my search terms makes sense (I never copy and paste straight from an Overture keyword list) and sometimes I use the same broad terms in the same AdGroup just with the words in a different order.
If a keyword doesn't preform well, it might only show for an exact or phrase match. The better it preforms the better it start to match.
AWA - guess the question I have is:
Is the concept about broadmatching in the below thread still accurate?
[webmasterworld.com...]
The phrase match doesn't catch it either.
The order: Broadmatch and phrasematch both are 'red widgets'
search term order is 'rusty red widgets'
Like so often, the explanations from the G crowd reminds me so much of the time, many many years ago, when I first got involved in the computer industry. When asking for info from the 'experts', I often got explanations which didn't make sense, but because of the obfuscation, I used to think it was me, I simply did not know enough. Later on, I realized it was BBB - Bullsh*t Baffles Brains. It's called 'saving face' in the East....
Wouldn't that make broad match pretty much useless then. In the above example, the ad for the kw red widgets includes the word rusty. The site is about rusty red widgets. Yet the search term rusty red widgets is not deemed to be relevant?
You're missing something here.
Sure, a search for rusty red widgets would be deemed relevant in this case.
But if some competitor explicitly bid on "rusty red widgets", then, every thing else being equal, THEIR ad is going to be deemed MORE relevant. They thought to explicity bid on the term "rusty red widgets".
Adwords penalizes the lazy.
If your site is about rusty red widgets, why on earth would you NOT want to bid on "rusty red widgets"?
