Introduction
As of February 2021, Google is updating its keyword matches. The main objective of this change is to increasingly qualify users' searches, bringing more relevant ads for the terms searched.
These changes will focus on two types of correspondence: Phrase and Modified Broad (broad match modifiers). The latter will be discontinued, and phrase matching will absorb some behaviors. But we'll see more details later in this article.
Keyword matches
If you already advertise on Google Ads, you should already know that there are 4 types of match on Google: Broad, Modified Broad, Phrase and Exact. If you're just starting out on this platform, check out this other blog article to learn more about how keyword matches work.
In short, each type of match may or may not activate certain variations in the user's search terms on Google. The broader the keyword match, the greater the potential search traffic, as your ad will be able to print for terms that are related but not necessarily identical to the purchased keyword.
With the accumulation of historical data, Google realized that the phrase match and the modified broad match often served the same cases. So it looked for a way to combine these two matches and bring better results for advertisers, as well as improving the user experience. For those who manage campaigns, this change will also save time when managing their accounts, as well as bringing more control to searches.
Next, let's see what changes with Google's new updates for Phrase and Modified Broad matches (broad match modifiers).
What changes?
With this update, the broad match and phrase modifier keywords will have the same behavior. The modified broad match will cease to exist in July 2021, but the migration has already been taking place since February 2021.
This new unified behavior will then consider the order of words when it is relevant to the meaning (i.e. the user's search intent).
Let's take a practical example in which our keyword is "moving services from São Paulo to Campinas" (phrase match).
It will continue to cover searches such as "cheap moving services from Campinas to São Paulo", as well as searches that generally only matched the broad match modifier, such as "corporate moving services from Campinas to São Paulo". We can see, then, that it is now possible to include terms in the middle of our keyword.
Phrase matching will not show ads for searches where the text has been inverted. For example, people searching for "moving services São Paulo to Campinas". And that's great news, because that's not the user's intention with their search.
Here are some examples of searches that will no longer be able to activate your ad after this update in correspondence:
We can see, then, that the user's search intent will prevail and we will have much more accurate results.
What do I need to do with my account?
There's no need to despair, as you don't have to go into each ad set and pause all the modified broad keywords, then add the new phrase match.
Google Ads itself will change the behavior of your modified broad and phrase keywords from mid-February 2021. With this automatic migration, your performance data will be maintained and there will be no need to migrate the keywords.
In July 2021, once the new behavior is rolled out globally, it will no longer be possible to create new keywords of the modified broad type. Until then, this function is still available on the platform, but Pareto's recommendation is that you already enter your new words in phrase format.
Also, monitor the performance of your keywords from the moment the migration begins. Thus, understand what is changing in terms of bidding and activation terms. Change bids when necessary.
If you use phrase matching, traffic may increase due to these changes. So keep using negative keywords, both to avoid unqualified searches and to exclude unwanted matches.
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