Exact vs Broad Match Debate - Question

[Zuckerman]

Bit of a newbie here, but I've seen some debate around recently concerning the merits/pitfalls of exact vs broad match, so sorry if this has already been covered.

I'm running a campaign with 100,000+ keywords, and had everything on exact match, with a comprehensive keyword list. The theory being - reduce the risk of unwanted clicks via Google expanded match, improve click through rate, and reduce overall cpc.

Even with the huge list of keywords, I'm finding that alot of them still won't appear when I search on that exact term, despite having it in the account. I think my only option is to place everything on broad match again, and just build out a long negative keyword list.

Apologies if this has already been covered - just curious to hear the experiences of others etc.

Cheers

[RhinoFish]

i doubt your match type is what is causing them to not appear, but regardless, you need to figure out why they're noit showing - identify the problem before you can solve it. assuming your bids and ads and other settings stay the same, switching from exact to broad won't aid performance. so if it's a perfomrance reason that's stopping themn from showing, you won't fix it. if it's an insufficient search volume thang, lumping them via match type may solve your problem, but performance won't be as good.

try to further isolate your problem before you decide what to do about it.

[Cladson]

You can find out the reason they are not showing via the online adwords interface. If you go to the ad group that contains the keywords, there is a small magnifying glass that shows you whether a keyword is showing ads or not.

[BDuns]

Yes, the first thing to do is check that little magnifying glass thing to see if the keywords in question are showing ads. You may find that google decided there isn't enough searching happening for you keyword, so they don't display the ad. I have NO idea why they do this.

Something to think about with phrase matching: let's say the phrase match keyword you use is "northern california junk." Google WILL NOT show your ad for the query "buy northern california junk" for a while, or until they decide the "quality" is high enough to show for other phrases.

If you have a tight budget, I suggest sticking with the exact match. If you have a little more freedom with the amount you can spend, try going to phrase or even broad match. I still don't know which is more tedious - building a huge list of negatives for broad-match keywords, or finding every single variation of a query and leaving them on exact match.

[Zuckerman]

Thanks all. I've switched the bulk of my keywords across to broad match, and whilst the CTR isn't at high, it's still good. The ads are now appearing across all keywords on broad match, whereas they weren't on exact match, even though the ads diagnostic tool said they were.

BDuns - yes, do you spend time building out the negative keyword list or put everything on exact? After this one, I'm opting for the former and seeing how the results go.