Matching Your Keywords to Searches

Should you let the traffic flow, or limit your matches to keywords that convert better?

This is an excerpt from Yahoo!’s Smart Start guide, which is packed with helpful content to assist you in making your campaigns as effective as possible. Whether you’re an expert search marketer or just starting out, the tips from Yahoo!’s “Sharon Goodsense” offer practical search marketing insights. Download Smart Start.

Match types are like valves that control the flow of traffic in your account. The two types, Advanced and Standard, are designed to control the way in which your keywords are matched to your customers’ searches. But you can choose which match type to use, even down to individual keywords. In this way, you can target only very precise traffic for your site, or choose to cast a wider net for traffic that comes from variations on the keywords on which you’re bidding.

Differences between the Match Types
The Advanced match type is the default setting in your account that displays your ad for a broad range of searches related to your keywords, ads or web content. Think of this type as the value that can offer increased reach. The Advanced match type may bring a lot of traffic flow to your site, but this might potentially decrease your targeting precision.

The Standard match type restricts the way your keywords match to user search terms. It restricts your ad to be displayed only for searches that are exact matches to your keywords, as well as for common variations and misspellings. You may want to consider this for some keywords and ad groups to help ensure you are getting clicks that are more relevant to your business.

Advanced Match Type Keywords should be Specific
Using the Advanced match type with generic keywords could land you in a world of hurt—right in the wallet. Because generic keywords can attract a high volume of searches, broadening the matching on those words can result in too many clicks where the searcher isn’t really interested in what you offer.

Let’s say you sell television sets. A specific keyword like “Brand X 42” plasma television” would probably attract the appropriate audience to your site. But a generic keyword like “television” may attract people who are interested in television repair or the history of television as a media.

Use Excluded Words
You may get increased traffic to your site while using the Advanced match type, but there are probably a handful of words or phrases that just don’t make good matches for your business. In keeping with the example from above, let’s say you sell television sets bit don’t repair them. You might then want to exclude your ad from appearing for searches that included the word “repair.”

Our excluded words feature enables you to block up to 250 words and phrases per ad group, or across your entire account. For more details on using excluded words, please read this earlier blog post or visit our Help Center.

Control Match Type at Every Level of Your Account
Setting the match type to Advanced at the account level will deliver broadly matched traffic throughout your entire account. However, even if your account-level setting is Advanced, you can selectively set certain campaigns or ad groups to receive Standard match type traffic only.

Finally, if you are a new advertiser you may not know right away which match type best suits your particular keywords. Thus, you may want to experiment with one or both match types before “setting and forgetting”.

— The Smart Start Team

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5 Comments Add your own

1. Nick Stamoulis | September 17th, 2008 at 12:39 pm

That was a great question and you clarified it perfectly.
2. SammieAnnie | September 17th, 2008 at 3:47 pm

Thanks for the clarification. I have read the smart guide and the Yahoo help center on this topic numerous times and wondering “based on Yahoo best practices” why if I am on advanced match for a very specific keyword like “buy a plasma television” that I would be matched to a singular keyword as generic as “plasma” or “television”? As an advertiser I enjoy advanced match, it helps increase distribution, and open up the campaign to additional relevant keywords, my only concern is that advanced match is matching very specific keywords to generic keywords and liquefying results. If I wanted to advertise on a generic keyword, like “television” I would add that keyword and track it individually to access ROAS for that specific keyword, particularly taking into account standard best practices and what your help center states: that “television” could end up pulling results for “repair” or “history”, which certainly does not relate to my route keyword of “buy a plasma television”. I rely on advanced match for other variations that include my route keyword not singular generic variations thereof. Could you shed some light on why this is happening, naturally this not only affects end results but also the quality index on a keyword or ad-copy level, which essentially ends up increasing minimum CPC’s?
3. Irving Washington | September 18th, 2008 at 8:40 am

Thanks for the info Sammie Annie, I saw something about this a few days ago on , and after checking it out, I’m quite alarmed.

I have not been able to get my reps to produce a “search query report”, even though other marketers confirmed its existence. I don’t know if they are playing possum, or just aren’t as privy to this info as the platinum level account reps, but it’s something I think every advertiser needs to see.

Not sure if the bad matching is happening to me, but I sure want to find out in a hurry.
4. DougEFresh | September 19th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

Thanks for clarifying the different match types. This article was somewhat helpful; however I am still struggling with why Advanced Match keywords can match to such broad, irrelevant terms. Can someone from Yahoo! go into further detail as to how this happens and why? I understand that with the advanced match option, you should add negatives, but Yahoo! only allows 250 excluded keywords which for most campaigns, is not nearly enough.

I read your blog back in August titled “Are You Bidding on the Right Keywords?” and it brought up a great question. For example, is it possible that if I am marketing a very specific guitar and have the keyword “Standard Fender Telecaster Guitar” on advanced match, that I could show up for a very broad search such as “guitar”?

From what I have read, this is very possible and most likely happening. If this is true, I would like to know what makes Yahoo! think this type of practice is acceptable. An explanation of why Yahoo! would do this and how it benefits advertisers would be very much appreciated. As an advertiser with limited budgets, I would like to make sure that my money is going towards relevant searches.
5. SammieAnnie | September 22nd, 2008 at 11:55 am

I received an email from you – thanks; however with so many people seeming to either have the same issue / concern it makes more sense to keep the dialogue transparent on the blog so we can all learn. Is there any way you could clearly indicate how advanced match works and whether or not there is a possibility for a keyword like “west la community college” on advanced match – matching up to “west la”?

From what I understand from the help center and Smart Guide, the route keyword “west la community college” should always be in the end keyword typed in my the searcher, if on advanced match it can naturally show up scrambled but all four of those words should show up in there somewhere, not sure if I am missing something when I am reading these documents but thats pretty much how I read it.

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