Not just for plurals anymore, close variants will extend to include word ordering and function words in inexact match keywords.
In the good old days, “exact” meant exact. Then things got fuzzier. Now they’re about to get downright blurry.
On Friday afternoon, Google announced another change
to the way exact match targeting works in AdWords. Matching for close
variants — plurals, typos, abbreviations, adverbs and so on — will
be broadened to include variations in word order and function words in
the coming months. With this change, Google may ignore word order
and function words when determining whether an ad should trigger for an
exact match keyword.
Google introduced close variants in 2012 as a way to capture plurals,
misspellings, typos and other versions of exact match and phrase match
keywords to broaden reach and coverage and save time building out
keyword lists. Advertisers that wanted tighter control were able to opt
out of close variant matching until 2014, when Google removed the ability to opt out of close variants for exact match and phrase match. Bing followed suit
shortly the following year. The latest blurring of what exact match
means is Google’s increasing trust in its machine learning and the
belief that it’s now at the point where advertisers can let the
algorithms take over and focus on other things. Google says early tests
indicate advertisers could see up to 3 percent more exact match clicks
on average while maintaining comparable click-through and conversion
rates.
What the change means
There are many cases in which variations can change the meaning of a
keyword. Take a recent example of [pancake mix] being matched to a
search for “pancake mixer.” Those are not the same thing. However, there
are many cases in which variations don’t change the meaning at all.
Here are the nuts and bolts of how these changes are meant to work:
Function words
Function words are binding words phrases and sentences like
the and
that, conjunctions like
and and
but, prepositions, pronouns, quantifiers like
all and
some, modals like
could and
would and auxiliary/hedging verbs like
be or
might or
will. Essentially, they are words that don’t have meaning on their own. Well, hmmm, unless by
will you mean a legal document.
With this change, function words may be ignored, replaced or added.
For example, the exact match keyword [restaurants cleveland ] could
match to the query “restaurants in cleveland.” More examples from
Google:
Word order
Notice in that last Miami cruise example, the function word changed
along with the word order. Word order often doesn’t make a difference
(in English), and users often don’t use natural word order when
searching even though the intent is the same. Take a keyword
like [teacher gift ideas]. The meaning doesn’t change with [ideas gift
teachers] or [ideas teacher gift]. You’d never say either of those out
loud, but the intent is clearly the same.
When word order is changed, Google says it will not add words to
keywords (though it may change function words as shown in the Miami
cruise example above).
Exceptions
One of the biggest concerns from advertisers will be whether Google
matches queries to keywords that don’t have the same meaning. Google
stresses it will not change word order or function words in exact match
when it understands changes would alter the meaning of the query.
Take the case of a query like “LAX to JFK flights.” The user
obviously doesn’t want to see ads for “JFK to LAX flights” or for “LAX
from JFK flights.” That’s a pretty straightforward scenario for Google
to recognize.
But something like [android compatible] does not mean the same thing
as [compatible android]. Maybe Google will know, maybe it won’t, at
least not right away.
These changes do not apply to phrase match keywords. And AdWords is
still designed to prioritize matching identical keywords to identical
search queries.
Google’s philosophy is: Spread a wider net, and then filter out what
you don’t want, rather than build a net that might not be big enough to
catch everything you want. Better to waste money on some bad keywords
than to miss out on some potentially good ones.
Often this approach works. And it certainly works much more often
than it did even a few years ago. It’s the rare person who misses
building out endless iterations of keywords, but many will feel the
pendulum is swinging too far in Google’s favor with this change. It
strips more control from advertisers and puts the onus on them to say
what queries they
don’t want their ads showing up on rather than what they
do want.
There are financial implications to putting the emphasis on building
out lists of negatives. Inappropriate variations are often discovered
only after an advertiser has paid for wasted clicks and the variation
shows up in a search query report. Precision control is being ceded to
the machines.
How to manage these changes
This change means advertisers will have to be increasingly diligent
about mining search query reports and thinking ahead about unintended
consequences when word order matters.
There are a few things you can do to prepare for the coming changes.
- Review existing exact match queries and determine if the loss of
function words or a reordering of the words changes the meaning. Add
those variations as negatives in your campaigns.
- Review close variants in your Search Query Reports to see if other
variations are currently being triggered that might be affected by these
changes. Add those as negatives.
- Starting in April, step up your mining of Search Query Reports, particularly for close variants.
- Get ready to update your scripts. If you are using a script like the one from BrainLabs to make exact match exact, it will need to be updated. We will provide a link here when a new version is available.
