What is Match type in advertising?

Match type: what it means in advertising

Definition

Match type controls how closely a search query must resemble your keyword before your ad is allowed to show. Google offers three: exact match written in square brackets, phrase match in quotation marks, and broad match with no punctuation. Broad reaches the most queries and controls the least. Exact does the opposite.

What to know

None of them mean what the names suggest any more. Exact match now covers close variants including synonyms and reworded queries, so read it as 'same meaning' rather than 'same words'. That drift is exactly why the search terms report is the only reliable record of what you paid for.

Broad match is not automatically wasteful. With smart bidding and a clean conversion signal it finds queries you would never have written down. With a weak signal and no negatives, it is the fastest way to spend a budget on the wrong intent.

Related terms

Negative keywordsNegative keywords are terms you exclude so your ads do not show for them. They are the main tool for stopping ...Search terms reportThe search terms report shows the actual queries people typed that triggered your ads, as opposed to the keywo...Quality ScoreQuality Score is Google's 1 to 10 diagnostic of how relevant your keyword, ad and landing page are to a user's...Bid strategyA bid strategy is the rule that decides what you pay for each auction. Manual strategies set a cost you contro...

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