Taking into the fact that not all people are perfect spellers or can inadvertently make mistakes while typing out words, Google AdWords has come up with a new setting that primarily focuses on user intent irrespective of a misspelling, especially in longer queries. According to Google, about 7 percent of total search queries consist of a misspelling, major and minor. In fact, the longer and complex the query, the greater the chances of a mistake!
Even with precise spelling, two individuals looking for the same thing online can often make use of slightly different variations like ‘kid’s scooter’ and ‘kid scooters’ or ‘marble flooring’ or ‘bamboo floor’.
The organic search systems of Google can detect and appropriately compensate for common misspellings and relevant, close variants. Users obviously appreciate when they get results, which reflect their object or activity of intent and then help them attain their desired objective, even if it might not a exact match for what they have wrongly typed. Taking this mindset into consideration, Google has decided to extend this behavior to ads as well. An official Google post explains:
Consider these three exact and phrase match keywords in AdWords.
(waterproof sunblock) ‘bollard cover’ (single serving coffee maker)
Now have a look at these two rows of search queries.
1. waterproof sunblock buy bollard cover single serving coffee maker
2. waterpoof sunblock buy bollard covers single serve coffee maker
Today, only the search queries in the upper row (1) are considered a match and allowed to trigger an ad that can appear in the results. The close variants in the bottom row (2) are not considered a match by AdWords, despite the similarity in user intent.
This is going to change starting in mid-May. Just to elaborate, phrase & exact match keywords will start to matching close variants, a new option that will be broadly beneficial for users and advertisers. The new options will include not only misspellings, but also singular/ plural forms, accents, abbreviations, and stemming.
Potential for more clicks
A set of early experiments done in this regard have tried to gauge the impact on advertisers drawing a third or even more of their online clicks from phrase or exact match. The new matching behavior on average improved AdWords search clicks by roughly 3 percent, with comparable CPCs. Researchers have been testing the new enhancement with different advertisers. The outcome thus far has been positive.
Previously they would have to spend considerable time, just to make up for as many possible versions of peculiar brand misspellings and to incorporate plural forms of all their keywords. With the improvements to exact & phrase match, they need not anymore have to worry about these wrong keywords, as they draw more relevant impressions in lieu of a smaller set of keywords, a major time and energy saver for them.
In the next few weeks, Adwords will start rolling out controls that let users adjust their keyword matching options. Once they go live, you simply need to log in to AdWords and click the campaign settings tab, and then select Keyword matching options under ‘Advanced settings’.
