Search Marketers Tear Into Google Over AdWords Exact Match Change

Like a volcanic eruption, search marketers are raising their voices today over an unpopular AdWords change that Google announced late Thursday. If you missed the news, Google said that AdWords will no longer allow advertisers to prevent their ads from showing up on “close variants” of their keywords — i.e., ads will, by default, show […]

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Like a volcanic eruption, search marketers are raising their voices today over an unpopular AdWords change that Google announced late Thursday.

If you missed the news, Google said that AdWords will no longer allow advertisers to prevent their ads from showing up on “close variants” of their keywords — i.e., ads will, by default, show up on both the advertisers keywords and on close spellings. If you bid on the singular version of a keyword, it might also show on the plural version and you can no longer tell Google you don’t want that. Your ads might also show on misspellings and other “close variants” of your keywords.

The reaction to this change on Twitter and the search marketing blogs has been swift, loud and extremely negative. Here’s a sample of the tweets we found today, many of which are using the #ppcchat community hashtag:

A number of search marketers have expanded their thoughts in blog posts addressing the change. Here are a few:

And that’s not all. There’s even a Change.org petition that asks Google to give back to advertisers the choice to exclude close variants from AdWords campaigns.

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Says petition creator Bryant Garvin: “Bottom-line this is bad for advanced advertisers and should be rolled back so those of us who ‘know what we are doing’ can still do what we do best!”


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily MarTech. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Matt McGee
Contributor
Matt McGee joined Third Door Media as a writer/reporter/editor in September 2008. He served as Editor-In-Chief from January 2013 until his departure in July 2017. He can be found on Twitter at @MattMcGee.

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