Keyword Matching Option and Search Query Report

I came across Adwords help forum today and notice that Sarah (Google’s employee from San Francisco) is writing a series of Tips on How to Optimize your Adwords account under Campaign Management Section.

In one of the tips, she mentioned about “Match Type and Negative Keywords“, I must say that i didn’t know about negative exact and negative phrase match before. Such a shame!
I often use Negative Broad match though…:(
If you want to understand more about these types, i suggest you read Sarah’s post.
However, the main thing i want to touch on today is Google Expanded Match function under Broad Matching option and a very important report that advertiser should use “Search Query Report”.
I understand that many blog posts have been dedicated to this topic before but because it’s quite important so i want to mention it again here.
Broad match, by definition,

the Google AdWords system automatically runs your ads on relevant variations of your keywords, even if these terms aren’t in your keyword lists. Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords.

While broad match has many benefits, i often find out based on Search Query report that my ads are shown to terms that have absolutely nothing to do with the products/services, and recently even terms in a different language (not the language i chose).This is because of the Expanded Match function where Google shows ads to synonyms etc… However, broad match often covers more than that. Google system tries to understand how “relevant” words associate together and show ads to those, by Google definition, associated words.
Google has done an excellent job with English language, there is little doubt about that. Nevertheless, when it comes to local language in SouthEast Asia, i don’t think Expanded Match function works that well because i almost had an heart attack when my colleague showed me the report.
(For those who never used Search Query Report before, refer to the screenshot below
Search Query report is basically a report that shows advertiser the real search queries that people type into Google and Adwords ads appear for those queries. It is often used to expand the keyword list (add in those terms that people type in but not exist in the account) or find negative keywords.)
In conclusion, “Search Query Report” is a must use report on a weekly basis IMHO (Previously i did it bi weekly but because i am so disappointed recently to see how expanded match functions when targeting local languages in SouthEast Asia.)
For negative phrase and negative exact, i envision they would be very useful for most of my clients because we often run campaigns for multiple products under 1 brand.
Considerable amount of time need to be spent on this though.

P.S: When can we have this level of information with Yahoo btw???

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