Earlier this year pay per click advertising network Google AdWords introduced a new feature to the broader Google AdWords community: Automatic Matching. The feature simply expands your list of keywords to include keywords that Google deems are relevant to your already carefully crafted ad groups. Harmless? Not quite.
The automatic matching feature could disrupt your ad groups tremendously. If you’ve spent time narrowing down your list of keywords to keep your groups tight then automatic matching would only set you back aways. You could deplete your budget on useless keywords and not even know it until it is too late.
SE Roundtable is expecting Google AdWords to expand its automatic matching reach for the holiday season. If that happens there will be some ticked off advertisers come Christmastime, and it won’t be very merry.
If you are running Google AdWords pay per click campaigns this Christmas, you’d better spend a little extra time monitoring your ad groups. Run more reports than usual and if you see anything funky going on with your account, check to see if you have automatic matching turned on (Google may decide to turn it on for you) and promptly turn it off – before you use up your budget on non-targeted keywords.
