Keyword matching options are critical to a pay per click management account, because it helps you target your ads more efficiently to your customers, but how many of you are using these same keyword matching options for your negative keywords? Like regular keywords in your account you have exact, phrase and broad matches, and with negative keyword matching you have negative exact, negative phrase and negatives, which is the same as broad match.
Now let’s dissect what this means for you. Negative exact means that it won’t show if the exact term is in the search query. Negative phrase match would not show if the keyword showed in that exact order, and negatives would not show if it was anywhere in the search query.
Windy City Strategies uses the regular negatives the most as does most of us, negative phrase almost never, but here is a scenario that would help to use a negative exact match. Let’s say you sell all kinds of safety vests, but you have found through Google analytics that the term safety vests hurts your rate on investment. Well you can’t negative vests, or safety can you, because your other terms won’t show. What you can do though is negative -[safety vests] and when that search query comes up, you will not show. How about that. Just another great tip for you to make your pay per click management more efficient.
For more information on negative keyword options, and other examples take a look at this Google blog post.