It looks like Google has listened to recent feedback that many Pay Per Click account managers, including ourselves, have passed on regarding the quality of broad match in AdWords. For a while now we have been concerned with the way Google uses broad match keywords as many clients have been appearing for totally unrelated terms, due to Google believing the words were related. An example being a Solicitor client of ours bidding on the broad match keywords “immigration lawyer” and appearing for the search query “homeoffice”.

In the interest of only exposing clients to traffic that is relevant, we have started shying away from broad match and sticking more with “phrase” and [exact] match terms. Either that or spend half our time adding in scores of negative keywords. This might not be needed now, as Google has announced the introduction of ‘modified broad match’ on its blog, here.

By placing a + sign in front of the words, you can now tell AdWords to only show your advert for very closely related searches. The blog post states that “close variants include misspellings, singular/plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings (like “floor” and “flooring”). Synonyms (like “quick” and “fast”) and related searches (like “flowers” and “tulips”) aren't considered close variants”.

This is a big step in the right direction and something we look forward to working with.