Google Keyword Matching Options

Ever since the Google Keyword Tool started showing the search volume counts, people have become confused about the keyword match modes shown within the tool and actual phrase searches in Google. The problem is mainly because Google Keyword Tool displays exact match terms within a pair of [square brackets].

Remember that the Google keyword Tool is primarily meant for Google advertisers. The square brackets are used in Adword settings to specify that an ad-text be shown only when the exact phrase is typed in as a search query.

To do a phrase search in Google you should use quotes!

Because of seeing square brackets for exact search, people assume that they should use [] to do an exact phrase search in Google!

This is not so! You should use quotes to do exact searches and not square brackets.

You can easily verify this...

[domain name software] - 7,080,000 results in Google US (as on 12 Oct 2008)

"domain name software" - 48,200 results in Google US (as on 12 Oct 2008)

It is obvious that Google treats [domain name software] and domain name software almost the same!

Differences between various Google Match Modes

Google Adwords uses four different match modes. These are already explained well in the official Google documentation about match modes. But we still get a lot of emails asking about this.

Broad match

If your keyword is luxury car rental, the ad-text will show for any of the following searches...

• luxury
• car
• rental
• car rental
• rental car
• cheap car rental
• luxury car rental
• car rental luxury
• luxury hotels
• used car

It is obvious that broad match will trigger the maximum number of advertisements and that you have to be very careful with it. If your business is luxury car rental, you do not want to trigger advertisements for terms like cheap car rental and used cars!

Phrase Match

Phrase match gives you a little more control because the words now have to appear in the same order. For example, if your keyword is "car rental" (within quotes), the following searches will trigger the ad...

• Europe car rental
• car rental Atlanta
• luxury car rental
• cheap car rental

But it will not trigger ads for

• rental car
• rental luxury cars
• car Atlanta rental
• car cheap rental
• car rent

Exact Match

Exact match means exactly that... if your keyword is [luxury car rental] (within square brackets), the ads will trigger when some one searches for luxury car rental and nothing else. The ads will not show if some one searches for luxury car rental Atlanta!

Negative Match

Use negative match to fix the broad match problem mentioned above. If you add -cheap as a keyword, Google will not trigger ads if the word cheap is present anywhere in the search query. If you use a lot of broad match terms, the negative keywords are very very important. In such cases, not using negative keywords in your Google Adword campaign will most likely result in huge costs and no benefits!

Tip: Make Sure That All Your Google Keyword Research is Never Lost!

Good Keywords v3 beta is now available and the first tool we have included is a little but powerful utility to manage the CSV files created by the Google keyword tool. Use it to import the CSV files into a local database. Then use the built-in query box to list any keywords you need!

The database created by Good keywords v3 is permanently available to you. You can even open it using the database tool of Open-Office or Microsoft Office!

You can download the current beta version from the Good Keywords home page

A simple screen shot video demo is also available.