For those who are new to Google Adwords there are 4 different types of matching that can be done for your ads. They are as follows:

  • Broad Match
  • Exact Match
  • Phrase Match
  • Negative Match

These are used when you add words to your ad groups. For today’s post we are going to cover Broad Match and Exact Match. By the way one is not really better than the other it just depends on what your goals are. So let’s get into each one and figure out why we would want to use each one differently in our real estate ads.

For all of our examples today we will use the word that we are advertising on as ‘Spring Valley Homes’ in reference to my hometown of Spring Valley, CA.

Broad Match

If I want to advertise on the search phrase ‘Spring Valley Homes’ and I want a match that covers as many different search possibilities as possible I will add the phrase Spring Valley Homes to my Google Ad Group without “”,[], or - around the word. I would merely just add the word to my campaign. So what does this mean then.

This means any time someone types any phrase that contains the words spring valley homes my ad will appear. So what are the problems with this. If someone typed in the following phrases I would appear:

  • spring valley homes for rent
  • homes spring valley by food
  • food in spring valley homes
  • Rent spring valley homes

This means my ad is possibly showing up to people who I don’t need to see my ad and may click it even though I don’t want them to. Keep in mind this isn’t always a bad thing but it is a very broad search and for that reason you will want to watch your ads carefully.

Exact Match

This is basically the opposite of a broad match search. When you put [] around your words such as [Spring Valley Homes] that means the user must type exactly that phrase. In fact if they type anything else before or after those words your ad will not trigger. The sample list below shows when my ad would NOT show up.

  • Spring Valley Homes for sale
  • Spring valley homes for purchase
  • buy spring valley homes

Now you can see that I would miss out on these searches but I would get anyone interested in just Spring Valley Homes. I would probably be getting a person just starting their search and that is who I would be targeting with the ad.

Each match type has it’s place in your ad groups. You want to make sure to use different types of match types in your ad so it triggers for different types of users. Have fun with it and you can always check out the free guide I wrote on Improving Your Performance on Google Adwords. We also have a free video tutorial section on different portions of Google Adwords as well at http://www.onlinerealestatesuccess.com/resources_video_tutorials.shtml.