Google’s broad match is useful if utilised correctly however the introduction a few years back of the expanded broad match was about on par with having a teenage daughter with a mobile phone on contract instead of prepay! .. in that if you didn’t regularly keep an eye on it you are in some pain at some point, my favourite example was a sex toy client’s “vibrators” showing for “vibrating tooth brush” and “vibrating alarm clock” search terms when we took it over .. not ideal!

Well times are a changing! +FINALLY - Google has just unleashed a beta test (UK and Canada) for a new match type “modified broad match” this new match will be like a broad match but modified (clue is in the name I think) in that they will allow you to specify the relevance of matches by using the “+” sign in front of the keyword(s) in queries that are important to you, so for example if you were flexible in which keywords your ad were show for but needed the search term to contain the word “printer”  you could use the modified broad match with keywords like “cheap +printer,” “discounted +printer,” or “+cheap printer.”

So in the examples above your ad would show if someone typed in “cheapest printer” but not if a user searched for “discounted laser jet” whereas before on expanded broad match “laser jet” would have probably triggered the ad as it’s a printer type but now with the modified broad match use of +printer it needs that word to be in the search term.

The new feature finally helps make broad match more useful, but then again it’s main use should still be like a trawler net bringing in fish which are then sorted according to size and type, as with adwords you then go add the keywords as phrase, exact or negative.

Negative keywords are the most underutilised feature in Google’s adwords arsenal, we are constantly amazed at how many accounts have none yet run broad match, this new match type will help focus things that little bit more and should, if used correctly, help save a few pounds whilst boosting that all important click through ratio, leading to better quality scores.

Whilst a welcome addition it’s still no excuse for not running regular search query reports, breaking accounts down into targeted adgroups with phrase and exact matched keywords and basically doing the hard work that’s needed to boost the quality score as high as possible to reap the rewards that brings.