Google AdWords Training: What is Modified Broad Match?

Google AdWords recently introduced a new keyword match option called Modified Broad Match. At a high level, modified broad match fills in the gap between phrase match and broad match. Which is great news, especially for companies using Google AdWords in highly competitive spaces. So let’s begin the Google AdWords Training!

• What exactly is modified broad match?
• How do I use modified broad match?
• What does it mean to my AdWords Campaign?

What is Modified Broad Match?

Modified broad match provides more flexibility with the targeting of your AdWords campaign. You will find Modified Broad Match to be more useful if you are currently using both broad and phrase match types.
This new match type option allows you to better control your broad match targeting and in the case of long tail keywords – you can select which keywords you want to apply the modified broad match rule to.
By placing a + sign in front of a broad match keyword, your AdWords ad will only be served for search terms that contain the exact keyword or contain close variants of the keyword. Google defines close variants as misspellings, singular and plural forms, abbreviations and acronyms, and stemmings. Related search terms like apple and fruit, or synonyms like smart and intelligent are not close variants.
So you can now tighten up your broad match keywords or even portions of your broad search terms that contain multiple words (i.e. cakes, chocolate cakes, red velvet cake).

Google AdWords Training – How Do I Use Modified Broad Match?

The implementation is pretty straightforward. When you add a new keyword, you put a plus symbol in front of your keyword.
For example:
+Google +AdWords +Training
Applies modified broad match to all three individual words for the keyword: Google AdWords Training
You could also elect to put a + sign in front of one or two of the individual words in any combination you choose.
Incorrect examples of applying modified broad would be:
+Google+AdWords+Training or…
+ Google + AdWords + Training

What does Modified Broad Match mean to my AdWords Campaign?

Well, that depends on your campaign(s), your industry, your budget and a whole host of other questions. But modified broad match appears to offer a much needed tool to fill the gap between phrase based and broad match types.
You will need to test this new match type for yourself and determine what is best for your business. I have seen clients that run AdWords campaigns in competitive markets where phrase match was the best option. Broad match produced too many generic, unqualified clicks, phrase match worked well but their budget could support more clicks. Modified broad match presents an opportunity to expand reach to qualified impressions without serving ads to unqualified surfers. Especially if you are targeting multi-word keywords that are fairly generic “tree houses”.

Google AdWords Training for Modified Broad Match

If you are a highly proficient Google AdWords professional, I would recommend setting up structured tests to evaluate the effectiveness of modified broad match on your AdWords campaigns.
If you are learning your way in Google AdWords and are not sure how to most effectively use this new keyword match type, here are some recommended resources:
Google’s Official Page on Modified Broad Match
Inside AdWords Google’s blog and explanation of the new match type
Read, test, monitor and improve. If you need to learn more, you may want to consider some Google AdWords Training. Or hire a Google AdWords Professional to improve your AdWords performance.