A look at the potential impact of same-meaning close variants for exact match, phrase match and broad match modifier on your keyword matching.
With last week’s announcement that it will extend same-meaning close variants to phrase match and broad match modifier, Google said it would be changing keyword selection preferences to help prevent keywords from competing against each other. This doesn’t mean there still aren’t times when keywords compete with each other on Ad Rank. To clarify how Google Ads’ keyword selection preferences are designed to work with same meaning keywords, we’ve mapped out several scenarios.
Existing preferences trump new same-meaning matching. In the initial announcement, Google said of the changes to keyword selection preferences: “If a query currently matches to an exact, phrase, or broad match modifier keyword that exists in your account, we’ll prevent that query from matching to a different phrase or broad match modifier keyword that’s now eligible for the same auction as a result of this update.”
In other words, Google won’t suddenly pick a different phrase or BMM keyword deemed to have the same meaning as a keyword that’s already triggering on a query. This is how the preferences already work for exact match same-meaning close variants.
The example Google gives is that the query lawn mowing service near me will continue matching to the phrase match keyword “lawn mowing service” even though another keyword in your account, “grass cutting service,” could also now match to that query based on same-meaning matching. – Read more
