Google Ads Changes Query Matching & Brand Controls - Advertisers Happy

Google Ads announced updates to its Search ads query matching and brand controls that made advertisers happy (it has been a while). The updates include better reporting for misspellings, negative keywords now block misspellings, and changes to brand inclusions and brand exclusions.

The best part of this news is that advertisers are super happy with the additional reporting, query matching updates and enhanced brand controls.

I like how Ginny Marvin, Google's Ads Liaison, summed it up on X - the emojis work well and I'll add some more from the announcement.

📈 More search terms reported by aggregating misspellings: Misspelled queries are already matched to their correctly spelled keywords in your campaigns. But many of those misspellings don't meet the privacy thresholds to show in the search terms report. To help align with this existing matching behavior AND surface more search terms, misspelled search terms will be reported in aggregate with their correct spelling. With this update, on average, 9% more search terms that had been reported under “Other” are now visible.

Google said it is "common for words to be misspelled on Search—for example, there are at least 1.5 million ways to misspell “YouTube” on Google Search2. Google Ads already matches misspelled queries to their correctly spelled keywords. However, search terms must meet privacy thresholds to appear in the search terms report, and many misspelled queries do not meet that threshold. Now, misspelled search queries are reported with the correctly spelled search query. This means that, on average, 9% of search terms previously under “Other” due to misspellings in the search terms report are now visible."

💪 Negative keywords now block misspellings: No more having to add all those misspellings to your negative keywords anymore either! Just add the correct spelling in your negative keywords and it will block all misspellings now, too. (Feel free to remove misspellings in your existing negatives to help streamline things in your account.)

Google said they have "also applied the misspellings behavior mentioned above to negative keywords. Before, you needed to add all misspellings of each keyword if you wanted to exclude them. Now, you can exclude all 1.5 million variations of “YouTube” with one negative keyword."

Ginny Marvin later added that "misspellings will apply to all negative keywords, regardless of match type."

This is how it works. Let’s say you have the keyword music streaming. Out of the searches “YouTube music”, “music streaming”, “yiutube music”, “google music app”:

✅ Brand inclusions in broad match campaigns: This feature ensures your ads match only to queries related to your brand name in broad match campaigns (we’ve updated the name from brand restrictions based on helpful feedback that the old name was confusing 🙂). You may also now see recommendations to switch your brand-focused campaigns to broad match and apply brand inclusions.

Brand inclusions in broad match help your brand campaigns get the benefits of broad match, while limiting traffic to the brands you select. It’s now easier for you to identify and take action on those opportunities through a new brand inclusions recommendation on your Recommendations page.

Here are some screenshots:

⛔ Brand exclusions across all match types + DSA: Already available in PMax, we’ll be rolling out brand exclusions in Search over the coming months. With brand exclusions, you can prevent your ads from showing on queries & misspellings for certain brand names you don’t want to match to – across all match types and Dynamic Search Ads.

Google launched a recommendation for brand inclusions in broad match, and will be rolling out brand exclusions across all match types and Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) over the coming months.

Advertiser Reaction

Here is some of the reaction from advertisers:

The addition of misspelled words is more than welcome!

Awesome updates @adsliaison https://t.co/SDBD2wUpkM

— Alfred Simon (@AlfredSimon) June 26, 2024

♥️ https://t.co/Mg38qZml5h

— Greg Finn (@gregfinn) June 26, 2024

All good changes! Advertisers all rejoice https://t.co/Pz3GqG2dTq

— Gil Gildner (@gilgildner) June 26, 2024

Negative Keywords in Google Ads now automatically prevent misspellings, so you don't have to add all possible variations of difficult-to-spell words.

Having worked on Google Ad Grant accounts with keywords for Alzheimer's and leukaemia, this is a welcome announcement. https://t.co/T6Nna0lYZF

— Jason King, Nonprofit Techie (@jasoncsking) June 26, 2024

That’s great and very rare to see Google listening to users🙏🏽 https://t.co/uNQdQ4Plna

— Anand Patil (@NotAnandPatil) June 26, 2024

Good to see our voices being heard, considered, and acted upon. Thanks Ginny and the product team!

— Jonni Lomax (@theblindking88) June 26, 2024

Hi, yes that’s correct!

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) June 27, 2024

Hi Andrew, Brand settings can be seen as optional controls to help direct branded traffic based on advertiser needs, with the option to include (brand inclusions) or exclude (brand exclusions) branded traffic. Unlike keywords, brands are treated like individual entities. We use…

— AdsLiaison (@adsliaison) June 27, 2024

Forum discussion at X.