What Is Modified Broad Match?

Modified Broad Match is a new keyword match option that Google AdWords recently introduced which fills the gap between phrase match and broad match.
Modified Broad Match is great news for businesses that are currently using Google AdWords in extremely competitive advertising spaces.

Modified Broad Match gives companies more flexibility with the targeting of their AdWords campaigns, particularly if they are using both broad and phrase match types.

Users of "long tail keywords" can select which keywords they want to apply the modified broad match rule to.

When users place a + sign immediately in front of a broad match keyword, their AdWords ad will only be served for search terms that contain exactly that keyword or close variants of the keyword.

Close variants of a keyword are abbreviations, acronyms, stems, singular and plural forms of the keyword and misspellings.

The + sign immediately in front of a keyword will not serve search terms that are related or synonyms.

For example; related search terms like fruit and pear or synonyms like unintelligent and stupid would not be served search terms.

Modified Broad Match allows you to tighten up your broad match keywords or even portions of your broad search terms that contain multiple words such as ancient coins, ancient Roman coins, ancient Greek coins, etc.

All you need to do is place a + symbol immediately before your new keyword when you add one. It couldn't be easier than that.

For example: A modified broad match applied to the individual keyword Uncleaned Ancient Coins, would look like +Uncleaned +Ancient +Coins.

It would NOT look like + Uncleaned + Ancient + Coins or +Uncleaned+Ancient+Coins.

Users do not have to use the + sign in front of ALL the keywords in the long tail keyword phrase. They could elect to place the + sign in front of only one or two of the keywords as in this example:

+Uncleaned Ancient +Coins

Depending on your budget, your industry, your campaign, and many other factors; it appears that modified broad match will be a much needed tool that will fill the gap between phrase based and broad based match types.

The best way to determine weather this is best for your business is to test this new match type for yourself.

Clients who run AdWords campaigns in very competitive markets will probably find that phrase match is their best option.

Using broad match can often produce too many unqualified generic surfing clicks. Phrase match may work well, but could be prohibitive if your budget cannot support the additional clicks.

Modified broad match in this scenario, provides users an opportunity to expand their reach to qualified impressions, without showing unqualified web surfers advertisements.

This is especially true when you are targeting generic keyword phrases or long tail keywords.

If you have used Google AdWords and are experienced in their use; I highly recommend evaluating the effectiveness of modified broad match on your AdWords campaigns by conducting some in depth testing.

However, if you aren't too sure how to use Google AdWords Modified Broad Match, here is Google's official page to help you out.

To Learn About Some Common Errors Made Creating An Effective Google AdWords Campaign, Click Here.