Keyword match types haven’t changed in years. Since 2001 we’ve been plugging away with Exact, Phrase and Broad.

As a brief reminder, this is what the match types all mean.

Exact Match: This allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase exclusively

Phrase Match: This allows your ad to show for searches that match the exact phrase

Broad Match: This allows your ad to show on similar phrases and relevant variations including synonyms.

Now rocking onto the scene comes ‘Modified Broad‘. This match type is a compromise between phrase and broad, and allows you to grab some of the extra reach of broad match whilst keeping control of the search queries triggering your ads.

If – like Barracuda Digital – you favour an extensive exact and phrase march keyword list, this is a useful addition to the keyword armoury.

How does it work?

All you need to do is to place a plus symbol (+) just before your broad match keyword.

Every time a broad match keywords is preceded by a + it will ‘closely’ match the users’ search query, either exactly or as a close variant.

What’s a ‘close variant’?

These are:

acronyms;

abbreviations;

singular or plural forms;

misspellings;

stemmings (like “tile” and “tiling”).

The key thing here is that synonyms (such as “fast” and “quick”) and related searches (like “cars” and “BMW”) aren’t included. So Modified Broad essentially gets rid of the (hard to control) ‘expanded match’ keywords.

Here’s a useful image that highlights several match type strategies:

modified broad

Modified Broad gives you the chance to appear on a greater number of searches than the equivalent phrase keywords, but less than full broad match.

You can also try modifying the broad match of some – but not all – of the broad match keywords in a phrase.

As an example, the keyword car +tyres will match the search “BMW tyres,” but the keyword +car +tyres won’t.

To find out how Barracuda Digital can bring modified broad match to the benefit of your PPC Campaign then get in touch.