Last week, PPCGreg posted on Twitter that Google Ads is "taking more liberties in the queries they're allowing for Exact Match to show for. He said it "seems like they loosened things up a good bit."
This comes from this help document that shows this graphic where Google shows examples of exact match, saying "Ads may show on searches that are the same meaning or same intent as the keyword. Of the three keyword matching options, exact match gives you the most control over who sees your ad. Exact match is designated with brackets, such as [red shoe]. Below is an example of how exact match will work:"
Shep from the fun and insightful MarketingOClock pointed this out and said "so they basically tried to give these match types new definitions like without us noticing because they're nothing like what they were with close variants. So it says broad match terms are terms that relate to your keyword, phrase match are searches that include the meaning of your keyword and exact match ads may show on searches that are the same meaning as your keyword. Point is we don't even know if it's loosening up because we can't see any search terms!"
Here is some of the reaction on Twitter to this:
and that's just 1 week after they made the BMM/Phrase change... smh
— Greg (@PPCGreg) April 12, 2021
I bet they've been opening the faucet a little more each week too!
yep same here - layer on top a greater % being categorized as "other"
— Greg (@PPCGreg) April 12, 2021
They might be broader but I can’t see the search terms so who knows 🤷🏻♀️
— Andrea Cruz (@andreacruz92) April 12, 2021
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: Ginny Marvin from Google explains that this is really not new:
Those examples reflect the 2018 update to exact match close variants to include same meaning or same intent queries https://t.co/kcANBZUTqM
— Ginny Marvin (@GinnyMarvin) April 19, 2021
