Your guide to broad match

Broad match extends its reach beyond exact and phrase match by identifying related queries. This helps you attract more visitors to your website, spend less time building keyword lists, and focus your spending on keywords that work. Using broad match to capture these high-intent queries can increase your reach and coverage. Check out About keyword matching options for details.

Broad match benefits

With broad match keywords, your campaigns:

• Can reach additional relevant search terms compared to phrase and exact match
• Provide more data and flexibility for Smart Bidding
• Use additional signals to ensure relevance and intent in expansions

Google Ads Tutorial: Add broad match keywords to your Search Campaigns to reach more customers

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How to get started with broad match

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the "Appearance" icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

Broad match is the default match type for all keywords. When creating a new keyword, you can use broad match by simply inputting the keyword in plain text. To convert exact or phrase match keywords to broad match, select “Broad Match” in the dropdown in the “Match Type” column. To convert multiple keywords at the same time:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Audiences, keywords, and content drop down in the section menu.
3. Click Search keywords
4. Check the box next to the keywords you want to edit.
5. Click Edit.
6. Select “Change match types” and then, if it’s available, click Upgrade to broad match. If that option isn’t available, click Change all match types and then select “broad match”.
7. Click Apply.

Tip:

Check out the Search Automation technical guide to learn more about the signals Google uses, how queries match to keywords, how using Google AI makes keyword matching more effective, and what you can do to improve performance.

Note: It’s critical to use Smart Bidding with broad match. This is because every search query is different, and bids for each query should reflect the unique contextual signals present at auction-time. Smart Bidding uses these signals to ensure that, for all of the relevant searches you could reach with broad match, you’re only competing in the right auctions, at the right bid, for the right user. Check out Your guide to Smart Bidding for details.

Measuring broad match results

Our measurement resources can provide insights into the performance of your broad match enabled campaigns. You can use these tools to find out how to optimize your keywords, build out negative keywords, and discover how well your campaign keywords are performing overall.

• About the search terms report
• Get negative keyword ideas using the search terms report
• Measure Search Network keyword performance

Related links

• Your guide to AI-powered Search ads
• Search Automation technical guide