Broad match keywords are a lot like Marmite. Some PPC marketers love them and rave about great results. Others sneer at their mention, and give examples of low quality search terms and wasted clicks and budgets.
How is it possible that two such polarised opinions exist for the same PPC tactic? Could the broad lovers be undercover Google agents sent to spread the broad match propaganda?
The truth is businesses are different and so are Google Ad accounts. What works for one, tanks for another. What worked last year doesn’t work now and who knows what will work next year.
In this article we’ll explore the good, the bad and the ugly sides of broad match keywords. We’ll help you decide if you should use them or not. We'll also talk abut how to use broad match keywords, if you want to try them out. Read on, I dare you!
If you’re reading this article, you probably already know about match types in Google Ads. When you target a keyword and use broad matching, Google can expand and interpret your keyword quite freely. Your ad might end up reaching searches that are very different from your original intention.
If you were to use a different match type, like phrase, Google will be much more conservative and stay closer to your original keyword. And with exact match type keywords, the search terms (what users actually search for) will be even closer to your keyword.
Broad match keywords expand on the keyword text and reach a wider audiences as they search for (hopefully) related terms.
This can be both good and bad. It’s good if you want to grow and reach a wider audience, and it’s bad if your budget is limited and you end up getting clicks for irrelevant search terms.
Note: Search terms or search queries are the actual searches people make which are then matched to a keyword. For example: The broad keyword Mens shirts could get a click from someone searching for ‘Black T-shirts for men size medium’.
Google wants us to use broad match keywords, and as a result they have some advantages working in their favour.
Broad keywords work well with conversion based automated bidding. This includes maximise conversions, maximise conversion value, target CPA and target ROAS.
When Google controls the bids and has data about searches and audiences that converted in your campaign, it also uses real time signals to decide when to show your ad or not. Under these circumstances the extra freedom that broad keywords give Google, allows it to ‘decide’ if the search intent is relevant for your keyword or not. Even if the user's search query is quite different from your original keyword, Google can still determine if the search intent is relevant.
Beyond the actual keyword, broad keywords also utilise other signals to match a user’s intent.
When using broad keywords, Google takes into account what users previously searched for. This can help Google understand what they’re really looking for, even if they haven’t fully expressed it in that specific search.
"I know what you searched last summer" Google uses previous user searches as a signal for broad keywords. It's a useful feature, even if slightly creepy.
A broad keyword will look at all other keywords in your ad group. If you have group keywords around a specific theme then this will help Google understand the intent behind your keywords. A broad keyword will also look at exact and phrase match keywords within your ad group.
When using broad keywords, Google will also look at your landing page text to understand what you are advertising. This works particularly well when Google understands your page and product/ service. It can work against you if you advertise a niche product or service that Google just doesn’t understand well.
We tested if Google Ads understands what this John Lewis landing page is about. And it did...
You can see what Google understands from your landing page by using the keyword planner tool in Google Ads.
You can use the keyword planner to search for keyword ideas based on a landing page. Make sure to choose 'Use only this page'.
Here is an export of the keywords Google understood from the page.
It’s impressive to see how well Google understands what the page is about and what users might be searching for when they are looking for this type of content. With a page like this, there is a good chance that broad keywords will work well.
And here's the John Lewis landing page.
With all this in mind, it’s clear to see why broad keywords could be appealing. But do all these features actually work as advertised? From my experience, they sometimes do and sometimes don’t. It depends on several factors.
The key elements that will determine if broad keywords will serve you well are:
Here are some examples of businesses and how well or badly they might do using broad keywords:
With most B2Bs I would stay away from broad keywords. Broad tends to work better for large volume B2C. B2B leads tend to make very specific searches that are usually low volume. If they tried broad keywords, they’d probably find that most of the clicks go to consumer search and there’s a lot of wastage.
With high volume industries like fashion, Google has a good understanding of the product and users. Typically there will be large volume in the account and this allows the algorithms to optimise campaigns based on conversions. Broad keywords are like to work well here.
What’s more, if the business is looking to scale, broad could help reach a lot of searchers.
While there are many searches regarding local architects, using broad match might result in Google showing ads when people search in other areas. From my experience, if the practice advertised specific neighbourhoods in London using broad keywords, Google will expand that to other locations in London. Google typically interprets these local keywords as targeting London as a whole, so ads shouldn't show up for searches of other cities like Manchester but would appear for different areas within London.
With the practice being small, it’s most likely that the would be on getting low costs per conversions rather than a growing number of enquiries. Phrase and exact match are likely to serve this business well.
For this business, using broad is a safer gamble. They could probably use broad keywords with London as a location, and Google will show them when people are searching for specific areas like Soho, Camden or Southwark. Going broad means easy coverage of a variety of searches. Any highly converting search terms can be added as exact or phrase match keywords too.
Because broad match keywords get signals for the other keywords in the ad group, I would not recommend creating a new ad group for them. Instead, add them to existing ad group and monitor how this affects performance. You can add a label or simply filter by match type so that you can monitor their performance.
If you’re not currently using broad match, I would recommend adding 1-2 keywords to one of your existing ad groups and checking any changes in performance after a week or two.
Another alternative is to create a custom experiment and add some broad keywords in the experiment. Google can A/B test the two versions of the campaign and you can easily see which version is performing better.
From my own personal experience with different Google Ads accounts, broad match works for some and doesn’t for others. If you do want to try them, make sure you’re combining this with automated bidding and solid conversion tracking.
If you’ve not used them before, and you’re looking to grow your account and reach a bigger audience, I would highly recommend testing them out and seeing for yourself if they work for you, or against you.
They’re a good tool for keyword mining, reaching a broader audience and increasing the volume of your accounts where phrase and exact matches have reached a ceiling.
We're a small but might Google Ads agency based in London, UK. We work on Ecommerce PPC and lead generation Google Ads accounts, mostly in B2C. If you want to grow your revenue, increase your enquiry volume, get more sales or solve any Google Ads related problem, give us a call and we'll be glad to help.
Odi Caspi - Founder & Head PPC
