Google’s Exact Match Updates For Adwords

Google Adwords Singapore

PPC Services Singapore

In the past month, Google has made an update about how it will match the keywords in your Ads accounts. This update is fundamentally for ‘Exact Match’ only.

A while ago, we saw the extension of Exact Match keywords to cover their singular, plurals, abbreviations, and misspellings. But this time, the change is about expanding the coverage of Exact Matches by including two additional components:

1. Function words

Now Google can ‘insert’ or ‘remove’ function words(such as “from,” “around,” “to” and so on) within the ‘Exact Match’ keywords and they would still consider it as a close variant.

Below are a few examples of how close variants of ‘Exact Match’ keywords after the insertion or deletion of function words could affect the actual search queries.

[table id=1 /]

2. Words Order

In addition to the insertion and deletion of function words within ‘Exact Match’ keywords, we are likely to see changes in word order as well.

This means that the order of words in ‘Exact Match’ keywords may be interchanged, however, the meaning of the keyword will still be the same.

Below are some examples of changes in word order.

[table id=1 /]

Let’s see how this shift will have an impact on your Google Ads campaign.

Pros

PPC advertisers may experience an inflow of more traffic (both relevant and irrelevant) without including additional keywords due to the extension of the close variant of the ‘Exact Match’ keyword.

Cons

Since the search queries will have higher chances of losing relevance, PPC experts may be required to take control of ‘Exact Match’ more firmly, especially those companies that have a low spending budget.