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In 2023, I remain unconvinced that Broad Match keywords in Google Ads & Bing Ads are worth it
I consistently see people – and Google themselves – raving on about how “improved” the AI has gotten in Google Ads over the years for matching Broad Match queries with customers that convert.
Maybe in some extremely broad eCommerce verticals where you can take a “shotgun” approach with an extremely wide product range this is true… but I still fail to see how, even with a massive Negative Keywords list, they work better than having Exact & Phrase Match campaigns only.
The sheer quantity of irrelevant keywords that still come through when advertising Broad Match KWs leads to tons of wastage, and the sheer amount of time to manage every single possible combination of Negative Keyword you have to include rather than just using Exact & Phrase doesn’t seem worth it.
Especially given that Exact/Phrase Match keywords are now much looser with “close match” etc., I fail to see the point of Broad *unless* you are doing initial keyword research on a new account & using Broad for ‘discovery’ in order to build out an actual keyword list (which you will then put into Exact/Phrase Match campaigns anyway).
OR if you are *maybe* in an extremely small niche with extremely low keyword volume for the other, better, match types & just trying to build awareness.
Broad Match is thus really still only a “research tool” for people who don’t have good enough Exact/Phrase keywords yet, not a conversion tool.
And Bing Ads is basically still just a worse version of Google Ads with even worse intent matching as well. Broad Match still = trash to me.
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1 Reply
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Using broad match with tCPA works fine, you allow the algorithm to show ads for wider range of keywords, but it needs to focus on high intent queries to deliver tCPA.
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I was on the same train as you up until 2 weeks ago. One of my accounts is an e-commerce DTC brand and we typically use phrase match for their search campaigns and let Pmax do their thing. We created 50/50 experiments for each search campaign and tested against a broad match campaign. So far broad match is driving more conversions for cheaper and looking at the search terms, they aren’t too irrelevant. Most likely will apply the experiment once it reaches Stat Sig.
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I got some good results for b2b leadgen (finance) as l was running both campaigns (phrase and broad) in an experiment. Broad with max value and phrase with max clicks. Broad got 2-3 x more conversions along the funnel with maybe 20% more at the end of the funnel. The quality of leads was similar.
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I agree with you totally. We do only lead generation. For exact I see lots of close variant, even if the search term is already keyword phrase in my account. I tried broad, but I just turn it off after spending tons of time adding negatives.
Even for exact and phrase I do the guessing game. I am guessing what way off words I am showing up for, even if the meaning is way off, because of course, we do not see all search terms.
Quick example: “holiday apartment” gets clicks for “apartment rent”. So… show me the same intention in both.When (I know – never) I could see 100% of search terms, maybe then I will try again broad….
The old saying: do what the preacher does, not what it says.
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I work in recruitment and jobs sector. Broad match is horrid in my opinion. It totally goes off topic. Phrase and “exact” are absolutely fine.
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Interesting topic as I’ve been on the fence for the past few weeks as to whether to try Google’s suggestion of using Broad Match to improve my Target CPA (usually I’d run a mile). I add negative keywords daily so have 1000’s so am probably in a better position to test. I’ll keep you posted on how the test goes when I finally put my toe in the water 😉
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PS I also find Bing Ads absolute junk! Their Phrase match is just a joke so god only know what their broad match would be like…. probably serving space craft ads for chocolate searches etc 😉
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PPS See my Microsoft Ads ‘conversion/rant’ here https://www.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/154jog0/microsoft_ads_phrase_match_total_dog_sht/
Microsoft Ads - Phrase match total dog sh*t!?
byu/steessex inPPC -
Do you actually hear people saying that broad keywords are the way forward? Surely it’s only Google saying it, and constantly giving differently worded sneaky recommendations to try to get us to go broad-only.
When I check my stats, phrase and exact consistently out-perform broad, and I don’t feel the need to go broad to get additional (less relevant) reach.
Not that I have a big problem with irrelevant search terms… when I choose broad kws I choose them very selectively and watch them.
Having said that, what I have heard a few advertisers say, is that broad + conversion-based bidding strategy worked for them when they had a big enough budget, and my budgets might be too small to make that strategy work. Don’t know and am unlikely to find out!
My experience with Microsoft Ads is that its broad kw matching has been no worse than Google’s, and the much cheaper CPC means I’ll keep using it. BUT that might be because my clients are nonprofits or working in medical and education, sectors which tend to perform well in Bing anyway.
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Once you reach a certain threshold of conversions and assuming you have dialed in creatives and landing pages, broad match can definitely outperform phrase/exact.
This is when Google’s AI starts to “understand” what you’re advertising… basically it figures out what group of queries lead to conversions. At this stage, which takes several weeks or longer, you’ll see most of the irrelevant queries disappear from your search terms reports like magic.
The truth is that many advertisers simply aren’t “there” yet.
One important thing to remember is that top of funnel, is not the same as “wasted” ad spend.
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That’s like saying “In 2013, I remain unconvinced that Netflix can threathen Blockbuster”.
That’s ok buddy, you’re just lagging behind.
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Everyone has had this feeling towards broad match for years. But it’s changed a lot! I would just carry out experiments and split traffic. See how it works. In 9/10 cases it’s worked better for me.
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I have an ecommerce site with 40k+ products (not counting sku) there’s no way I’m going back to exact or phrase match.
Broad match just yields the best results for me. Also I can’t be arsed to include every product as a keyword.
We also tried an automatic approach that would automatically generate keywords for products but this lost out in several split tests.
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Broad in Google works great as long as you have a solid landing page and the correct conversion actions set up and firing properly. That said, Google and BING broad are not the same. I wouldn’t run broad on BING unless I was capped and leveraged audiences with it.
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I’m running ads in 3 industries – For the first industry broad match is the worst, to the point where I almost burned the whole account down after using it briefly. For the second industry it’s also not good, but for the third industry I can’t justify moving away from it because it’s converting like crazy. All just depends I guess.
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Bing is 100% garbage either way.
The delta between cost per conversion on google between exact/phrase and broad is closing. Is that because google is rigging the game? I duno
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I have run 2 different experiments and both times after longer than 2 months phrase almost doubled the performance of broad. Broad did okay in the first month but anything after that it was all phrase/exact
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