Google’s direction of travel has long been away from the primacy of the keyword – both as the unit of value we use to guide Google Ads, and as the mechanism Google uses to determine when to show our ads.
A Search Engine Land article from February this year was headlined: “Google Ads no longer runs on keywords. It runs on intent” (Shalom Gonzalez). I have the PDF of a Google presentation from 2018 that conveyed exactly the same message – “The time is right for machine learning” / “Every user – not keyword – is treated differently.” Even then, it wasn’t particularly new.
So much of the last decade has passed under the shadow of this assault on the search term as the precision tool that used to be so core to Google Ads. And much of the nuance in modern Google Ads management has been about keeping sight of how much the search term still matters, even as its value is attacked from multiple directions.
One thing worth recognising in that context is the value of exact matches to the search term – instances where your keyword is identical to the query someone actually typed (sometimes keyword match type is relevant to this, sometimes not). The mechanical advantages are significant:
1. Keeping search terms under control. Where you have an eligible keyword deemed identical to the search term, that keyword must be used above any keyword that doesn’t exactly match. This pulls search terms into their rightful place rather than allowing them to roam wild. And where you have the same keyword on different match types, the more refined match type wins regardless of Ad Rank. Together, these rules give us a framework in which we can know which searches are triggering which keywords and ads, without the extensive internal negatives that used to overcomplicate so many accounts.
2. Dynamic keyword insertion. DKI inserts the keyword triggered, not the search term used. When the search term triggers a matching keyword, this works as intended – making for a more relevant ad. Leave the relationship to Google’s discretion and you’ll often get a search term matching a very different keyword, producing an ad less relevant to what was actually searched.
3. Search campaign priority. Where a query exactly matches an eligible keyword on exact match in your search campaigns, the search campaign takes precedence over Performance Max in the auction. Where it doesn’t, that priority disappears. Given that we usually want our core search terms handled by Search for better performance, visibility, and manageability, this alone makes it worthwhile.
4. Quality Score. Quality Score is only calculated on queries that exactly match the keyword. This means, for example, that improving a keyword’s CTR by adding negatives for less relevant search terms has no Quality Score impact. If you want to see and influence your Quality Score for a given search, you need a keyword that exactly matches it.
These are real benefits to having keywords that exactly match at least the search terms you really care about.
But not all the value is in the search term
One of the principal purveyors of the “search terms still matter” message has been Brad Geddes, so it was interesting to see his recent piece entitled “When to pause exact match and rely on broad match instead.”
It sheds light on a situation many of us will recognise. You see a search term performing well under broad match, so you isolate it into its own exact match keyword – only to find it performs poorly. The success it showed under broad match doesn’t replicate when it stands alone.
The key point is that while the search term does still carry a huge weight of value, it doesn’t carry all of it. A high proportion of likely converters will be searching on the most relevant terms, but some proportion won’t. In principle, broad match (and even broader keywordless targeting) can find value in those dark recesses of not-obviously-relevant-search territory.
How to see which situation you're in
The proof of the pudding, of course, is in the eating. And it’s pretty rare that you’ll see broad match actually outperforming exact match on ROAS or CPA. That doesn’t mean broad match has no place, but it keeps things in perspective.
However, sometimes this dynamic does play out – broad match genuinely does a good job of finding diamonds in the rough – and we need to recognise it when we see it.
The best diagnostic tool for this is an old favourite: the Search Terms Match Type report. Under ‘broad’ (and now AI Max too), it reveals the genuinely incremental result of these broader targeting methods – the differential performance of these same keywords being on broad versus phrase (and then phrase versus exact). Those gaps are exactly where the ability to find value further beyond the matching search term lives.
If broad match shows a much higher CPA than exact, then the rough is outweighing the diamonds. If it shows a lower (or at least, acceptable) CPA, then Google’s additional signals are earning their keep. Either way, this report tells you which situation you’re in – and what to do about it.
