Did you know you can use match type options with your negative keywords? In fact, to be most effective in the management of your pay per click campaign you should make some of your negative keywords either phrase or exact match.

Let’s define the different match type options:

• Broad Match – Applies across the board to your keywords. If you specify a broad match then you are saying anything with those specific keywords apply to your filter. For example, for the broad match phrase yellow widget, any use of the words yellow or widget would apply to your filter.
• Phrase Match – Phrase match is a little narrower. Let’s say you put your broad match phrase in quotation marks – “yellow widget”. In that case, any instance of yellow widget in addition to other words would trigger your filter. So a search for “huge yellow widget” would return results for that phrase match if you didn’t include any negative phrases in your filters. On the other hand, a search for “yellow widget huge” would not return results”
• Exact Match – Exact match is delineated by brackets [ ]. An exact match phrase returns results for that specific phrase and nothing else. So if we put “yellow widgets in brackets like this – [yellow widget] – then a user searching for yellow widget would see your ad, but a user search for yellow widgets, huge yellow widgets, or yellow widgets with wheels would not.

Now, how can you use these match types to filter out words and phrases you don’t want users to search for and find your ad?

If your key phrase is yellow widget and you use a negative broad match key phrase long wide then any instance of long or wide appearing with your keyword phrase yellow widget would be filtered out. So if a user searches for long wide yellow widget, she will not see your ad, but if she searched for huge yellow widget then she would.

Now let’s take the negative phrase filter and put quotation marks on it. It now becomes a phrase match negative keyword phrase. How will that affect a user’s search query? In that case, if a user searches for “long wide yellow widget” then your ad would not show, but if the user searched for “wide long yellow widget” then she would see your ad because it doesn’t fit the parameters of the phrase you placed in quotes.

Now let’s take the quotation marks off the negative phrase and add brackets to it to make it an exact match negative keyword phrase, like this – [long wide yellow widget]. In that case, any combination of these four words together would show your ad for a search query with the exception of the exact phrase “long wide yellow widget”. Users searching for that specific phrase would not see your ad.

As you can see, with negative keywords, the more specific you are with your filters then the fewer search queries that will be affected by them. And that’s how you can use match types to filter out negative keywords in your pay per click advertising campaigns.