Good morning search marketers, deep breaths.
Sure, you knew better than to get comfortable with the way Google handles match types, but it's still a jolt to the system when the change actually happens. Yesterday, Google said it will extend same-meaning close variants to phrase match and broad match modifier (can we just call this broadifier?) in the coming weeks. So will you suddenly have multiple match types getting triggered for the same query and competing against each other? Theoretically not. Google said it's changing its keyword selection preferences to prevent that.
What's it all mean? Big picture is Google has been moving in this direction for years. The days of zero-keyword search campaigns have long been predicted as machine learning has taken over and audiences have come into play. In fact, those days are already here with automated campaign types such as Local campaigns, Smart campaigns and App campaigns.
The reality is tight control is no longer possible. That kind of management was a tenant of being a good PPC manager when so many of us got started. But that's no longer how these systems are designed to work. We have to change our approach or we're going to over-optimize our campaigns to a stand still.
That's my take, I'd love to hear your thoughts as we continue to report on the changing nature of PPC management. Send me an email at gmarvin@thirddoormedia.com or reach me on Twitter (my DMs are also open) @ginnymarvin.
In other ads news, App campaigns are gaining more inventory sources. They now automatically extend to the Discover feed, YouTube search results and in-stream video ads on the mobile Display Network.
SEOs, Bing is looking for feedback on its Webmaster Guidelines as it preps for a refresh. You can provide feedback to Bing web ranking and quality project manager Frรฉdรฉric Dubut, who's heading up the effort, on Twitter, Facebook or from the Webmaster Guidelines site itself. Frรฉdรฉric specifically asked marketers to call out any "shady tactics" Bing should treat more strictly.
Keep reading for a Pro Tip from Amalia Fowler on making sense of Google's click share metric and more.
Ginny Marvin
Editor-In-Chief
