What are the keyword match types?

When trying to rank AdWords ads on Google, it's important to make sure you're targeting the right keywords, but it isn't always easy to determine the best ones to use. One way to make things simpler is to pay attention to match types. If you have knowledge regarding AdWords' keyword match types, you can more successfully reach your target audience.

There are five main types of keyword matches that AdWords uses, including broad match, broad match modifier, phrase match, exact match, and negative match.

Broad Match

Broad match keywords enable ads to show up for variations of particular broad keywords. Variations can include everything from misspellings and acronyms to abbreviations and accents, along with singular and plural forms of different words.

Unfortunately, while reaching as many people as possible might sound like a good idea initially, people may search for certain terms that are only vaguely relevant to your business, making these efforts ineffective in some cases.

Broad Match Modifier

Broad match modifiers are additional words that supplement broad match keywords. For example, you might have a broad match term of "keyword match types," and a modifier could be "ppc keyword match types." You can add modifiers using a "+" sign. Additional words may also appear in user searches.

Phrase Match

Phrase matches enable ads to show for searches including the exact phrase and potentially for other relevant words.

Exact Match

Ads targeting exact match terms will only show up for exact phrases as they appear, without any other variations or sequence of terms.

Negative Match

Using a "-" sign, ads can eliminate certain terms from showing up that make a search irrelevant to them. There are three different types of negative matches, including negative exact, negative phrase, and negative, which is basically "negative broad."

Acknowledging and taking advantage of these keyword match types can help you get the most out of your display and text ads in your PPC campaigns.