[webmasterworld.com...]
Hello everyone ... I'm excited to be helping AWA out with WebmasterWorld.There are quite a few questions here, but most of them seem to center around how the broad match variant of negative keywords function, so I'll try and walk through the examples used and give some concrete answers on how they would work.
The important thing to remember when dealing with the standard negative matching option is that it will act like a broad match term, i.e. '-maps of toronto' will prevent your ad from showing for any search query that includes all three terms, regardless of the order in which they appear. So, your ad wouldn't show for 'subway maps of toronto' or 'download site of toronto maps', but your ad would show for 'subway map toronto' and 'maps of montreal'. In order for the negative keyword term to affect delivery of your ad, all the terms in the negative keyword must be in the search query.
However, unlike normal broad match keywords, broad match negative keywords are not expanded to similar terms or plurals, so the negative keyword '-maps' would not prevent your ad from showing on 'map of toronto'. As lengthy as some negative keyword lists can be, expanding negative terms to include similar terms would be more frustrating than helpful as you tried to decipher why a particular keyword term was not triggering your ad.
I'm glad that the Learning Center included references to the embedded negative matching options. They are very helpful for specific situations, and should be used when the standard negative match is just not appropriate. The explanations I've seen here are accurate, so I'll just give a quick recap:
If your keyword list is:
widgets
red widgets
blue widgets
white widgets
-"red widgets"
-[widgets]Your ad would show for the search query 'red white and blue widgets', 'widgets with white racing stripes', and 'red widget', and may also show for the search query 'widget' if you get expanded to it. Your ad would not show for the search query 'widgets' by itself, or 'red widgets in a satin case'.
AWA2
