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Some of you may have noticed an alert within your Google AdWords account that says, “New! Automatic matching has been enabled in your account.” What is “automatic matching”? The one-sentence summary from Google states, “Your ads will now show for additional relevant search queries based on the keywords, ad text, and landing pages in your ad groups.” I’m certain we’ll be writing on this new match type in the future, but here some initial observations that could save you some headaches.
First, if you have seen the pre-mentioned alert in your campaign, then automatic matching has already been activated within your account. Most announcements in Adwords are optional tools or general updates, but you need to heed their warning, especially if you are not certain how this new feature works.
Second, if you leave automatic matching enabled within your account, here is a quick description of what you’re in for:
Automatic matching is an optional feature that helps your ads reach targeted traffic missed by your keyword lists. It works by analyzing the ads, keywords, and landing pages in your ad group. It then shows your ads on search queries relevant to this information.
This means that automatic matching will find “similar” phrases for your keywords that are “relevant” according to Google. Basically, you’re ads are going to start showing to a wider breadth of search terms. Right now, the best way to monitor your campaign’s performance is to run your search query report frequently. This report will tell you which search queries actually triggered your ads. If you find that irrelevant search queries are triggering your ads, you should begin adding those terms to your negative keyword list.
Third, this is completely speculative, but I was wondering how Google will determine what is “similar” to your keyword/landing page. I was conducting some keyword search this morning and if Adwords’ keyword tool is any indication on how they find “synonyms” for your keywords, then you need to be extremely vigilant when monitoring your performance, especially your conversion rate and cost-per-conversion.
Again, this is speculative, but here are some results from the Adwords keyword tool when you search for “synonyms”:
Keyword: pay per click management
Results:
adult affiliate
affiliate
affiliate project x
affiliate sales
casino affiliate
credit card affiliate
definition of affiliate
ebay affiliate
pay per click affiliate
pay per click campaigns
super affiliate
travel affiliate
wealthy affiliate
Keyword: email marketing
business marketing
direct mail
direct mail marketing
ezine advertising
internet advertising
marketing leads
small business
web design
website design
work from home
Automatic matching may be more targeted than these results (they probably will be), but I just want everyone to be aware that you may start seeing increased traffic from irrelevant, or not-so-relevant, search queries. Be cautious.
Fourth, if you haven’t checked out the Adwords help section to get additional information on how automatic matching will affect your campaign as a whole, here is their laundry list of answers:
- Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.
- Google Network: Automatic matching does not affect your ad delivery on the content network. It does affect your ad delivery on Google and the search network.
- Quality Score: The traffic accrued by automatic matching won’t affect your keywords’ Quality Scores or minimum bids.
- Ad position: When ranking your ads on search queries acquired through automatic matching, the cost-per-click (CPC) bid will approximate the current average CPC of your ad group. Learn more about ad rank for automatic matching.
- Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
Fifth, on a more positive note, automatic matching may work great for you! There may be phrases, keywords, or keyword variations that you haven’t dreamed of that Google will match to your ads! Then you can load those keywords directly into your campaign. See, that one was positive!
I’m happy to see that Google is always innovating and looking for new ways to serve advertisements, but it’s on the PPC manger’s shoulders to make sure that this new feature is best for your campaign.
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Joe this is a very good post and a great heads up to all PPC Advertisers. This new feature will likely add to the challenge of running accurate and quality search query reports. It has been our experience that Google unfortunately does not reveal ALL the keyword phrases that are searched and clicked on within these reports.
We spoke with Google about this issue recently and they said for some reason or another the keywords may not show in the report because there were not enough clicks generated by the keywords to warrant reporting them. When we asked them about a minimum number of clicks or impressions required they said that they could not provide use with a direct answer. Their final answer to us was this if they provided all the keywords in the Search Query report that were actually search for or clicked on it would take up too much bandwidth to generate the report and that it would take much longer to generate the report.
I don’t know about you or anyone else reading the blog, but I would rather have Google take longer to generate an accurate report in order to allow their advertisers to see what irrelevant keyword phrases may have been search for or clicked on. One irrelevant click is one click too many in our opinion, especially if it occurs potentially on 100s of unknown phrases. This can bleed even the savviest PPC advertisers’ wallets dry since they don’t have all the details.
We recently scrubbed through one of the search query reports for one of our SEO clients who said over the past month or so they felt like their click quality has eroded. In the report, we discovered over 900 unique keywords that Google would not release the identity of within the report. Something we should note here is although 900 keywords remained unknown to us. The keywords had very few clicks.
We were still concerned to say the least, since clicks cost our client an average of $2 a click (Ouch! With click costs like this we are glad to be an SEO company).
In addition the same report showed there were keywords that had only one 1 click and the keyword phrase was explicitly represented within in the report. Therefore, we are assuming the combination of low CTRs and bandwidth issues related to reporting effect the details of the report.
In order to receive accurate data and since a click saved on an irrelevant keyword is a click that could have been traded for a keyword that does work and convert. We would be willing to wait a little longer for Google to generate a report as vital as the search query report.
Anybody else feel that way?
What are some things you are doing to mitigate irrelevant clicks?
Thanks for this – very useful. I haven’t got any campaign alerts about this and I can’t see the option in campaign settings – where do you find it?
Does your campaign have to have certain criteria to qualify for Automated Matching?
One more thing .. I can’t seem to find the information in Adwords help .. where is it?
Joe – this is a great post! So nicely summarized. And your thoughts about the keyword tool’s synonyms search are very thought-provoking. I’m inclined to agree with your hunch.
Do you think that simply expanding a keyword set to include as many tail terms as possible, in tandem with using all 3 match types for each would make the need/desire to use Automatic Matching less desirable?
Great Post. Thanks for breaking down the new feature from an objective POV. I agree, negative keywords are very important if you run Google’s automatic matching.
This is a nice summary
Speaking to the problem of the Adwords Search Query report not showing ALL the actual search queries that triggered ads…
There is a way to show all these actual keywords if you’re using Google Analytics. It involves creating a new profile that appends the actual keywords to the keywords that you’ve loaded into Adwords campaigns. Instructions are on the ROI Revolution site:
http://www.roirevolution.com/blog/2007/04/exact_keyword_tracking_with_google_analytics_revis.html
I’ve found this to be a rich data source that’s helped me add tons of negative keywords in Adwords campaigns, as well as discovering new terms.
SEO Company: Yes, this is a problem with Search Query Reports, “In the report, we discovered over 900 unique keywords that Google would not release the identity of within the report. Something we should note here is although 900 keywords remained unknown to us. The keywords had very few clicks.” We have seen this problem before. That is a lot of unique queries to have no data for! We are still waiting for one of our clients’ Automatic Matching to come to fruition so that we can actually analyze the results. As Amber posted yesterday, we have seen minimal results thus far as most of our clients have been opted-in for only a week and it takes time for Google to start matching your ad group. One way to mitigate an eroding click quality to build up your negative keyword list. I know your Search Query Report isn’t giving you great data yet, but as information comes to light, you can act accordingly. Actually, continually building your negative keyword list is an essential strategy, even if you’re not opted into Automatic Matching. And another thing to keep in mind: if Automatic Matching doesn’t work for your client, you can always opt out.
Tammy: The AM (automatic matching) option is within your campaign settings under “Advanced Options.” If you haven’t seen the account alert, then you probably haven’t been opted in yet. Here is the link to the Adwords Help Section entry on AM:
https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=63323&hl=en_US
Andy Komack: You pose an interesting question about match types + long tail terms. Honestly, if you have all of these in your ad group, then I am actually interested to see what Google will pull out of their hat to automatically match your keywords! Sounds like you should have your bases (or at least relevant bases) covered!
Megan: Thanks for the comment!
Seo4: Thanks for the comment!
One of our excellent readers just emailed this to me:
“I just called Google regarding this Automatic Matching feature. The Representative I spoke with advised that Automatic Matching is not going to be enabled when the new feature is launched. Originally it was set up like this, but the plans have changed. I am assuming that not too many clients were happy about this
Currently this feature is not available to the accounts that i manage however, it will be available in early June for everyone.”
Thanks for the update Melissa!
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