Google Ads utilizes keyword matching to best reach your customers by optimized match type. There are many ways with each match type that can work well for your business. Optimizing your keywords means utilizing your bidding strategy to determine which type is most effective for you. Broad match is the only match type that uses all of the signals available to understand the intent of both the user’s search and your keyword, while having the flexibility to find the most relevant match that is expected to perform for you. Exact and phrase matches must adhere to additional matching requirements and are restricted from using these additional signals.
Tip: Exact and phrase match may work best for specific use cases, such as:
- Campaigns that don’t have conversion based goals and don’t use a conversion-based bid strategy, such as targeting an impression share on a specific set of search terms.
- Campaigns where matching only to specific user searches is mandatory based on industry regulations–like those in finance, pharma, and more.
For example, if you have clear performance goals and can accurately measure them within Google Ads, you’ll get the best performance by optimizing for those performance goals using Smart Bidding, then pairing that with broad match. This will get you the most conversions within your performance objective because Smart Bidding ensures that for all relevant searches broad match helps you reach, you are competing in the right auctions, with the right bids aligned to your performance goals, for the right user.
Or, if you have other goals like showing your ad 100% of the time when a user searches for your brand, you may want to consider Target Impression share bidding paired with exact or phrase match.
You can use the search terms report to view what searches are triggering your ads and how those searches are performing. The report can help you discover new ideas for creative and landing page content to best align with your customers' searches and add negative keywords that you don’t want. You can also check consumer interest insights on the Insights page to understand the consumer intent behind these searches.
