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What's the deal with including my keyword as part of a phrase that I'm excluding? For instance, for the keyword "sell widgets" and I don't sell widgets wholesale, should I put "sell widgets wholesale" in the excluded words field, or just "wholesale"?
It seemed straightforward at first, but then I noticed that if the excluded word comes between the words in a multi word keyword, then the excluded words tool will include the whole phrase ("sell blue widgets"), but if the excluded word comes at the beginning or end of a multi word keyword ("wholesale"), then it only suggests in bold the excluded word. So the real issue is if I include my exact keyword as an excluded word, will that prevent me from showing up on searches for my keyword? I'm getting dizzy now!
Do I understand this correctly? Also is there a different rule for broad/phrase match excluded words?
Having taken a look at Overture, it does seem rather confusing. I would imagine that using wholesale as an excluded word would block all searches including this word, so you wouldn't need to exclude the phrase as well. If you only want to block certain phrases using wholesale, but not all, then presumably, this is when you need to exclude whole phrases. I assume the same rule would apply to both broad and phrase match.
That said, I haven't used this feature on Overture and perhaps someone with experience can clarify whether this is correct. You could also try running a test.
