The Impact of Phrase & Broad Match Changes on Your Google Ads Account

You might know that search engine ads are based on keywords that help determine the relevance of your ad for the person searching. If you’re considering adopting, or currently run, online advertising as part of your digital marketing strategy—you should know about some big news regarding phrase match and broad match keywords modifiers from Google. Let’s explain what it’s all about. 

Phrase match refers to a group of words that must appear in a search query in a particular order. It can encompass a wide range of search phrases, but the order matters a great deal for this type of search.

Broad match lives up to its name and is much more open. The order of the words doesn’t matter at all, the words just have to appear at some point in the phrase. The benefit is that there is a much more opportunity for an ad to be triggered with a broad match.

To put it simply, Google is making phrase match modifiers behave more like a broad match modifier when it triggers ads and content.

So What Does it All Mean?

You will not have to do a complete re-evaluation of your ad copy. What a relief! If you have taken the time to make sure that your account structure is healthy and your campaigns and ad group keywords are set up properly, this change probably may not have much of an impact on your metrics. The intent behind the change is less about modifying ad copy and more about opening up the possibilities of who sees the ad. The change is meant to increase the pool of potential eyeballs on your ad (impressions). Top Draw recommends keeping a close eye on the performance of your campaigns and individual ads to monitor how this impacts you. 

If you’re already a Top Draw client who engages our online advertising services, this will probably have a very minimal impact on your business. The processes used by our team direct how we approach keyword research, strategy, and account structure takes account for variances in phrase and broad match modifiers when we conduct the holistic keyword strategy for an account. Top Draw has subject matter experts in creating, monitoring, and modifying Google Ads accounts, so our strategies are robust and you won’t have to reset the approach to a client account as a result of this announcement. 

The changes to phrase match and broad match modifiers are aimed at small and medium businesses, which tend to be run by people who don’t necessarily have the time to monitor a Google Ads account to the extent it takes to keep it consistently optimized. The changes are meant to simplify their keyword strategy so they don’t have to worry about the intricacies of Google Ads and they can tap into a larger market with the potential (the users who are presented the ad may or may not be relevant) to increase their leads and number of paying customers. 

It can be difficult to precisely pinpoint the result of the changes, but if the history of these types of modifications at Google is any indication, one impact you might notice is that the cost-per-click (CPC) will probably rise. This is because the more competition there is vying for impressions,  the more expensive it is. This will of course be taken into account with the overall ad quality score of the individual ad, ad group, and campaign as well.

Do you want to know more about these changes? Contact us at Top Draw and we can arrange a time to talk about it in more detail.