LONDON OFFICE
Phone: 0203 963 0810
Address: 4 Ravey Street, London, EC2A 4QP
info@thegoodmarketer.co.uk

Helping Small and Medium Businesses Achieve Their Full Marketing Potential | Digital Marketing Expert
Google announced in the earlier parts of February that it would be making changes to the phrase match and broad match modified keyword match types.
Now, while this might strike fear into the hearts of PPC specialists and campaign managers everywhere, we’re exploring what this means and what we’ve learned in easily digestible chunks of information.
Phrase match is expanding to include any additional broad match modifier traffic. Therefore, support for the broad match modifier keywords will end.
These changes have started taking place already, so we wanted to put our heads together and consider what we’ve learned in the first few weeks of this change to PPC.
What’s more, although the changes will likely mean that campaigns will need closer management over the next coming months, these changes could potentially save advertisers time managing keywords in the future.
We’ll be looking at:
What’s Happening To Broad Match Modified?
During this transition phase, the most important thing for all advertisers is that BMM keywords will still work and will continue to do so using the new phrase matching behaviour.
Advertisers will still be able to create BMM keywords until July. However, there won’t be the option to set up BMM keywords after this date when creating new campaigns, ad groups or updating existing campaigns with new targeting. Any existing BMM keywords will continue to work using the new phrase match behaviour.
The second most important aspect of this change is that, according to Google, there is no need to make any changes or take immediate action.
This is because the ‘new behaviour will be applied to both phrase and BMM’, so existing performance should carry over from current BMM keywords to the new behaviours.
How This Might Impact Campaigns/Advertisers
Now, even though Google suggests that advertisers will not have to take immediate action and change all their current BMM keywords to phrase, these keywords’ change in behaviour is likely to start shifting performance in some ways.
For example, if you’re currently targeting the BMM variant +google +advertising +services, this input will no longer function as a ‘true’ broad match modifier. The changes to this match type mean that Google will treat this keyword as a phrase match type and expand it to cover broad match modifier traffic.
Some professionals have suggested this isn’t a completely ideal change, given that “phrase match isn’t an equivalent replacement for a broad match modifier in all cases.”
There are instances where the BMM keyword refines the search queries that match these keywords more narrowly than phrase match keywords, which may lead to changes in the relevancy scores of advertisers campaigns.
What About Traffic?
Google suggests that for phrase keywords, there might be an increase in traffic and that advertisers are recommended to keep a close eye on search terms reports and account performance.
In contrast, Google announced that there might be a decrease in traffic for current BMM keywords – especially those using the modifiers on some keywords but not all. For example, if you have campaigns targeting +google services.
To combat this, Google suggests:
As much as Google insists that current BMM keywords will continue to work and that the updated phrase match behaviours will pass seamlessly over to these keywords, their announcement suggests otherwise.
Essentially, BMM is dead. Long live BMM.
Our Advice?
Track your current BMM keywords’ performance and monitor any dips in traffic that occur over a sustained period.
If you notice a significant drop in traffic for your broad match modified keywords that seems more than just a fluctuation, consider adding these keywords as phrase match or adding more relevant phrase match keywords to recover this lost traffic.
This will then allow you to compare your recently added phrase match keywords with their relevant BMM counterparts and make educated adjustments based on your performance data.
Why Does It Matter?
Of course, the point of all this is to determine why this change matters to advertisers. And considering that this is the fifth time that Google has changed its keyword match type rules (in 2014, 2017, 2019 and 2021), advertisers need to know precisely how these changes will impact their campaigns.
Following Google’s best practices feels a lot like chasing that attainable utopia or proving the existence of unicorns. There are a lot of sources with reliable and often convincing accounts that suggest that these best practices lead to increased performance and relevance – other times, it seems like everywhere you look there’s a new lead, a new best way to optimise campaigns to reach that pinnacle performance.
Therefore, understanding this newest change is important to ensure that performance is maintained and that advertisers get one step closer to yelling ‘eureka’ once that PPC unicorn is uncovered.
For accounts that rely on BMM keywords for traffic, this change could:
This is because the new match type behaviours will restrict keywords from matching to search queries, or gathering traffic, in cases where the word order matters.
The requirement that BMM keywords currently only using the modifiers on some of the words in each keyword will now reduce the potential reach of these keywords unless the advertisers change this.
For accounts that rely mainly on phrase match for traffic, this could:
With the slightly different match type behaviours, existing phrase match keywords will expand, reaching traffic that they would not have had the flexibility to before.
What We’ve Learned About These Changes
Overall, this seems like another step towards machine learning for Google. Our experience in the numerous campaigns that we run in our Google Advertising Services has reflected the suggested impact that Google announced. Targeted keywords using full BMM match types have seen a decrease in impressions overall.
While this does not apply to all BMM keywords in all our current campaigns, it’s certainly a noticeable trend that has impacted how we’ve been managing our campaigns.
This step towards automation is something we’re taking with a pinch of salt. This latest change reduces the clear delineations that used to exist between match types, leading advertisers more and more down the line of relying on Google’s recommendations and automated learning.
This is, naturally, not a bad thing. However, this can result in less manual control for advertisers. Taking a little of the control and complexity away from more advanced users and PPC advertisers and replacing it with a system that allows more novice users to come in and understand keyword targeting.
We’ve also learned that there are no clear-cut directions to accurately prepare for any implications of this more recent change to keyword match types.
However, we suggest:
Just because we’re a digital marketing agency in London, it doesn’t mean we can’t help your business wherever you are in the UK and wherever your audience is in the world. We run campaigns at all levels and completely understand the needs and challenges of running a small business! Our experience across a broad spectrum of digital marketing platforms means we have the experience and the know-how to get the job done.
The Good Marketer was founded in 2017 with a very clear mission and even clearer values. Although we might not have been around in the industry for as long as some of our competitors, we actually think that is a good thing. We’re open to new ideas and have invested in our experienced talent in order to provide the best service for all our clients. To get a better idea about this, read our reviews as they simply speak for themselves!
Our core values make us different. We’re not afraid to embed ourselves into your team, get under the skin of your business, seek out business challenges and provide positive results that make a real impact on your bottom line. We pride ourselves on being your business’s biggest champions because we’re genuinely passionate about working with SMEs.
We set our terms as 3 or 6 months, so we have enough time to deliver the results and execute the bespoke plan we put together for you. However, we have clients who have been with us for a number of years because of our proactive and personable approach. Long term relationships lead to the best successes, as we seek out business challenges and solutions together.
Absolutely! Whether you know exactly where you need to fill in the gaps or you need a full overhaul, we can help.
Here at The Good Marketer, we appreciate that you might not have the resources to invest in all channels immediately. We can create a digital strategy that is bespoke for your brand and in line with KPIs that we agree on together. This document will outline a strategic plan of the work, tests and optimisations we will do each month and will also highlight when we expect to introduce new channels and capitalise on bigger opportunities. Book a call to outline what you’re looking to achieve and find out more!
Phone: 0203 963 0810
Address: 4 Ravey Street, London, EC2A 4QP
info@thegoodmarketer.co.uk