Broad to Begin With
Google recently expanded the breadth of searches that will match to broad-matched keywords. Originally, broad match would trigger ads when a searcher typed in misspellings of an advertiser’s keywords. A little over a year ago, Google expanded broad match to include synonyms of an advertisers’ keywords. While that did enable the advertiser to have his/her ads show for search queries that he/she hadn’t thought of, it also resulted in ads showing for unrelated queries. For instance, do you think that the query: “What is event marketing” should be matched to the keyword: “hispanic advertising agencies?” Me, neither, but Google’s broad match algorithm did. This expansion turned broad match into a very powerful, but potentially dangerous tool: It could deliver new customers, but it could also eat up your budget if you weren’t careful.
