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What keyword match types are you actually using for Search Ads right now?
Posted by on December 27, 2025 at 9:17 amDo you still rely on exact/phrase for control, or are you seeing better results with broad + smart bidding? Curious to hear real-world experiences, especially for lead-gen campaigns.
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1 Reply
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Finds exact match to work better, especially when you have to narrow it down to specific region and a very niche service
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Exact match for low volume and/or to launch new campaigns without much account history. Broad match for higher volume campaigns. Almost always smart bidding unless conversions are extremely low.
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Broad match with smart bidding outperforms phrase in almost every client account I manage now… but only when you have offline conversion tracking feeding closed deals back into Google. Without that, broad match just burns budget on curiosity traffic.
I run dual campaigns for lead gen clients… broad match for discovery at 60% budget, phrase match for proven converters at 40%. This lets the algorithm explore while protecting baseline performance.
Phrase-only strategies miss too much qualified search volume in 2025 because Google’s query matching has evolved past exact keyword dependency.
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I start with EM/PM with a goal to move over to smart bidding some more, always. I trust smart bidding with the right signals more than my own abilities (or any other humans abilities) to set the right bid.
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It depends on the account and sometimes even the campaign itself. We use a first party tag that feeds only qualified leads to Google via API and that part is important.
If an account is established and has approx. 50+ qualified leads per month, broad match typically performs best.
If an account is brand new, I’ll run core keywords on exact like ‘rhinoplasty near me’ and long tail keywords on broad like ‘best plastic surgeon for nose jobs’ in separate campaigns and then add negatives daily at the campaign level.
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it depends entirely on your conversion volume. if the account gets 50+ conversions a month, broad + smart bidding (tcpa) actually works surprisingly well because the algo has enough data to learn. if it’s a small account, broad just lights money on fire.
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