Uncovering negative keywords in your campaign is more important than ever now that Google Ads has switched up its Keyword Match Types.

You see, a few short years ago, there were only four main match types:

• broad match
• + modified + broad + match
• “phrase match”
• [exact match]

As of 2020, Google started phasing out modified, broad, and match, and treating phrase match more like modified. In addition, in the “ol’ days,” exact match was firm. If it wasn’t exactly that keyword phrase and in that order, your ads wouldn’t be shown.

Not so anymore…

Exact match sometimes feels like broad match to me now. (Close variants have entered the chat!)

Google started letting through something called “close variants.”

These close variants are supposed to be very close to your exact match and for a while, that was true. But “times are a changin’” and so is the way “close variants” effect campaigns.

Let’s take a look at an example:

• Exact Match Keyword: [moving companies in LA County]
• Close Variant Example Circa 2013: moving companies in Los Angeles

Notice how deep the examples above are tightly correlated? Sure, they’re not identical, but Google knows the close variant is close enough.

Now let’s take a look at modern-day close variants:

• Same Exact Match Keyword: [moving companies in LA County]
• Close Variant Circa 2022: mover near me

Notice from the new example how much looser Google is, allowing your ads to be shown with a keyword phrase that doesn’t even resemble the original.

Tectonic Shift in Online Advertising Technology

This is a fundamental change in how technology is stepping into the advertising role.

Google (and other platforms like Meta) have so many more data metrics at their fingertips that they no longer have to rely on just the information you feed them—like keywords, etc.

They now have enough behavioral data and signals about the searches to determine if they’re the right fit for your service or product and, by God, they’re gonna use it.

Google, the Imperfect Genius

But here’s the thing—they’re wrong. A LOT!

Sure, they’re sitting on mounds of data, but their close variants are often way off the mark.

It’s also likely that they let your ad through for a close variant that may be a great fit for another advertiser, but not for you.

For example, using the moving company example again, let’s say your highly targeted keyword is [movers in Los Angeles] and Google feeds you a close variant of “piano movers in Los Angeles.” Seems like a good fit, right? Well, not if you don’t offer piano moving services.

So for me, Google is an imperfect genius that takes all the data in the world using their machine learning and packages it nice and neat to be sold to me or one of my clients as a click.

Bottom line: Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. Just keep in mind that you need to be watching your search terms very carefully to make sure you’re not being fed irrelevant waste.

Google’s Close Variant, Your Best Friend or Worst Enemy?

For me, the close variant is an extremely valuable tool. But much like other tools, they need to be handled with care.

They can be extremely useful in discovering new keywords that you never thought about.

Also, I use it as a tool for organization and to help uncover new ad groups. For example, if I have [Los Angeles movers] as my keyword and the variant lets in the term “Los Angeles mover and packer companies”, I may want to create a new ad group for people looking for “packers” and custom tailor the ads, extensions, and landing pages to target this sub-segment and evaluate its performance over time, separately from the non-packer keywords.

Additionally, try to monitor your search terms on a weekly basis and add the undesirable terms to your account-level negative keyword list, campaign negative list, or ad group negative list. The more of this you can do, the better you’ll be at preventing waste and keeping your campaigns ultra relevant.

Conclusion

Google has evolved over the years to become a highly intelligent platform that no longer relies on one-way data from you, the advertiser. It has AI and machine learning to make it a much more dynamic advertising experience, and one of those tools is the close variant. Love it or hate it, it’s not going anywhere.

Use it to your advantage and get an edge over the competition. Just make sure to pay special attention to it so you’re always maximizing your marketing dollars.