Comments on: Stomp the Google AdWords Expanded Broad Match Problem

By: Sydneynetwork

Sydneynetwork — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:09:31 +0000

I also encountered the same issue for one of my clients.
In our case, the client’s brand term CPC shot up significantly because the brand term is triggered by irrelevant broad match keywords that are closely associated with the brand’s offering.

I did pretty much the same thing as you did (ie. run regular Search Query report and add unwanted queries as negative keywords, more specifically exact negatives).

What I also did additionally were to take the top 10% converting keywords of broad matches and re-introduce them into the campaign as exact matches. I did not use any phrase matches at all. This seem to work well too.

Sydneynetwork

By: David Szetela

David Szetela — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:52:00 +0000

Hey Andrew – my data is at a rather coarse level – Matt’s may be more refined: for the Clix client affected worst by EBM, ad spend increased over $7,000 the month we detected the issue. We spent a few weeks running Search Query reports and pouring negative keywords into the campaign, but every few days additional bad matches would pop up (“bad matches” as defined by search terms that bore little or no resemblance to the campaign keywords – but garnered clicks and few or no conversions). Once we employed the “Phrase Match Two-step,” the number of bad matches dropped precipitously, and spending and conversions came back in line with the previous month.

I’ll email Matt and ask if he’s got more.

By: Andrew Goodman

Andrew Goodman — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 18:31:28 +0000

I’d love it if you and Matt could show me clearly the impact of this “ban the two-word broad match in favor of both major phrase matches” change – in terms of overall click and sales volume. Depending on the account, my sense is that the broad matches, and the expanded broad matching, are generating a lot of volume (albeit, not always good volume). Seems like it is a bit of a tightrope…