Google Ads has recently announced[1] that it now allows ads to be served for queries that it understands to share the same meaning on broad modified and phrase match keywords.
For bigger advertisers, this is probably not a huge concern, as they are not limited by budget. Being visible for a wider range of search terms without having to add thousands of keyword variations can only be a good thing.
But what about those with limited budgets, and those in niche industries that need to target very specific keywords?
While there will undoubtedly be challenges to overcome in light of these changes, there are also likely to be opportunities.
Challenges
1. Spend may increase
An increase in impressions is likely to equate to more clicks, which is fine if these clicks go on to convert. But with Google determining how relevant a search term is to the keywords in your campaigns, just how much could spend skyrocket if left unchecked?
Neil Andrew from AdTech startup PPC Protect, says:
“These changes are definitely going to result in a massive increase in irrelevant and even invalid traffic on Google Ads accounts that aren’t actively managed/monitored. Our internal analysis on this shows up to 20% increases in budget usage from the change in broad/phrase match keywords, the vast majority of which isn’t relevant to a conversion action. As a SaaS platform provider, we are in a unique position to analyse this.
We have over 35,000 Google Ads accounts connected to our system currently, and we have had a number of users notice an uptick in both wasted spend and irrelevant traffic. We’ve also seen a large share of this traffic be invalid – mostly from