Search Engine Optimization News Blog

Google is expanding their ‘automatic matching’ AdWords feature today. This controversial proposal has caused no little upset among advertisers who fear their budget will be eaten up by showing of their ads on less relevant pages.

The beta is supposedly extremely limited in scope, is only currently available in the US and Canada, and Google claims that it is geared to improve your click through rate without exceeding your daily budget - it will just use up the ‘surplus’.

The idea behind the automatic match is that it will help catch some relevant searches that your keywords miss. You can see the results of searches by running a search query performance report; the automatic searches will be labeled as such. If you Feel that you are being brought up on non-relevant searches, Google advises that you add the terms to your negative keyword list.

You can of course opt out of this feature by going to your AdWords accounts and opting out one ore more of your campaigns. The expanded beta doesn’t go completely live until June 3rd, so you have some time left to consider. It might be a useful tool, since Google does let you opt in or out on a per campaign basis; if one campaign is flagging you could opt in for a month just for that sector and see what happens.

Hopefully this will be a tool that does what it promises; however, users will want to keep a close eye on their campaigns to make sure they are receiving full benefit.