Murmurings of a new Google match type have been circulating the industry for a while but today we can reveal that Google has launched a new match type: Broad Match Modifier (BMM). This new match type will allow part of the keyword to be matched to part of a search term.
Let’s look at this in practice for the keyword “Sony Phone”. Say you want part of that keyword to be matched to other similar search terms, i.e. misspellings, e.g. “Sonny”, but not matched to “mobile phone” (broad match), now with BMM simply apply “+” in front of that part of the keyword (+sony phone). This can be applied to any or all parts of the keyword, e.g. “phone” instead of “sony” would be: sony +phone
This is pretty new, and is only available in the UK and Canada, but we will be testing it on our clients who are eligible. Using the example of “+sony phone”, I would imagine this would have much cross over for keywords already in a well structured account, and so should be aimed at new keywords rather than existing ones, unless there are plans for a restructure.
Ginal Patel
UK Account Manager
Let’s look at this in practice for the keyword “Sony Phone”. Say you want part of that keyword to be matched to other similar search terms, i.e. misspellings, e.g. “Sonny”, but not matched to “mobile phone” (broad match), now with BMM simply apply “+” in front of that part of the keyword (+sony phone). This can be applied to any or all parts of the keyword, e.g. “phone” instead of “sony” would be: sony +phone
This is pretty new, and is only available in the UK and Canada, but we will be testing it on our clients who are eligible. Using the example of “+sony phone”, I would imagine this would have much cross over for keywords already in a well structured account, and so should be aimed at new keywords rather than existing ones, unless there are plans for a restructure.
Effectively, it is mimicking Yahoo’s Standard Match (matching the keyword to plurals and common misspellings). It sounds as though this would be useful for initially uncovering new keywords based on a more selective criteria than the normal broad match, as the search terms should be much more filtered. Although, as with normal broad match, it would skew the performance, and therefore models, of the keyword as it would be matching to a much larger breadth of search terms – some of which will not be entirely relevant. We have discussed in previous blog posts, the perils of Broad Match.
Therefore, when using the new match type, search query reports should be regularly run to enable the highly abundant search terms to be added as Exact Match keywords, reducing the fluctuation in performance of the BMM keywords. Having said this, as we see an ever growing trend in Broad Match taking the Exact Match’s share of search terms, I would expect to see similar trends for Broad Match Modifier.
Ginal Patel
UK Account Manager
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