The Two Word Broad Match Trap
Published July 28, 2008 by Mike Seddon
Are you one of many people who are losing money daily through Google’s two word broad match trap?
If you are using broad matches with two keywords then you are almost certainly going to fall foul of this “feature” of Google’s very soon.
So what is this trap?
It works like this. Let’s say you are using the two keywords cheap widgets as a broad match. Which of the following searches do you think would trigger your ad to show?
buy cheap widgets
cheap widgets online
cheaper widgets
expensive widgets
blue widgets
Now I bet most of you would say that the first three searches only would match to cheap widgets as a broad match.
However you would be wrong because Google will actually also match you to expensive widgets as well as blue widgets.
Apparently if the word widgets is highly relevant to your ad then Google will still trigger a match even if the second keyword isn’t in the search.
You can check this for yourself. Try running a Search Query report and check the keywords that are triggering your ads. You should see some that really shouldn’t have triggered your ads.
Unfortunately to fix it all you can do is to either stop using the broad match or start adding negative keywords every time you find a match that you would rather didn’t match.
Whilst this is bad news for many Adwords customers, it is no doubt great news for Google as they are maximising the clicks they can get by “helping” you to get a match even when you don’t one!
PS - If you aren’t sure about broad, phrase or exact matching then please read my Beginners Guide to Adwords
Filed under Adwords
