Comments on: Match Types Explained: Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match

By: Shane

Shane — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:07:22 +0000

If you are doing keyword research for SEO purposes, then neither the broad match nor the phrase match number are meaningful. Neither of them represent anything to do with SEO.

The exact match number gives you an estimate of how many people actually search for an exact keyword, that you could try and get ranked for.

If you’re doing keyword research for PPC campaigns, that’s a whole different story and not something I can go into (mainly because I don’t know enough about it).

By: Nophie

Nophie — Sat, 12 May 2012 09:43:41 +0000

Hi, shane,

Thank you for this of your post. I am new to Google keyword analysis, and my question is, our website aims to selling products online, and in the process of keyword research, which indicator should be paid more attention to, broad match, or phrase match? If phrase A has a big volume in broad search, but the volume for phrase search is quite low, and phrase B has a smaller volume in broad search, but the phrase search is bigger than phrase A, in this case, I should adopt phrase B, not phrase A, is this correct?

Thank you very much for your help. Have a good day!

By: Jayson Foxx

Jayson Foxx — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 03:49:10 +0000

Nice job Shane!

In particular, explaining in detail the distinctions between the match types as they relate to search engines and keyword research. I get the question about ‘Exact Match’ types all of the time. This seems to be the most confusing of the three for most of the people that I talk too.

Again, great explanation!

Cheers,
–Jayson

By: Shane

Shane — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 11:27:34 +0000

allintitle and allinurl searches aren’t really any better than just searching in quotes. You’re still measuring some facet of how many pages are in Google’s index, which has no real correlation to how strong the top ranked pages are.

By: Evocolize

Evocolize — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 23:25:59 +0000

Hello Shane,

Great approach, I can’t agree more, well explained. With this article business owners will not be fooled with the SEO Companies by showing theme the ” Board Search Volume”, just a trick to get the business lol.
Do you know the trick to find the exact competing pages?
I know this one
allintitle: ”keyword”
but there is another one for sure I just can’t remember it.

Thanks for sharing

By: Shane

Shane — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 11:11:48 +0000

Hello Jorge,

The reality is that local search volumes for individual keywords are often quite low. Ignoring that and looking at broad match instead won’t change it.
However, the flip-side is that it’s usually a lot easier to rank for a local term.

By: Jorge

Jorge — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 17:12:08 +0000

Hello Shane
Congratullations for your post, very enlightening, as usual.
I’ve been trying to cope with the keyword research theme. There is no doubt that this is the most essential topic to a future good venture. The rest is dependent of the keywords that are going to sustain the sites. But the search volume is the issue that still makes me doubt.
Essentially what I need to understand better is the search volume dimension, but applied to non English keywords, or sites for that matter. In my language, Portuguese, we have yet another problem wich is the differences between Portuguese and Brazilian writing. Perhaps the English writers have the same problem with English and American writing.
Ok, so when I make a search for a given keyword typically I only find good search volume for one word keyword and on broad search. If I try the exact search then it’s basically impossible to find a acceptable keyword. The global search volume in Portuguese it’s much smaller the in English, that’s why I ask for your advice on what to do in those smaller search universes. Are we to use the broad instead?
Thanks

By: Paul McCarthy

Paul McCarthy — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:44:35 +0000

It’s probably also worth mentioning the new match type that Google have introduced recently that comes into play on for Adwords advertisers.

It’s called broad match modifier and is essentially middle ground between broad match and phrase match.

It’s far more targeted than the original broad match but captures more volume than the restrictive phrase and exact match keywords. Here’s some more information if anyone is interested:

http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=175280

By: Shane

Shane — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 17:00:47 +0000

From the Google help section:

Keyword variations can include synonyms, singular/plural forms, relevant variants of your keywords, and phrases containing your keywords.

Source. If AdWords ads are shown for synonym searches and the search volume is supposed to reflect the potential reach of an ad, I assume synonym searches are included in that number. I agree 100% with the importance of the psychology factor, next to just looking at the raw numbers.

By: Jillian P

Jillian P — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 14:33:26 +0000

I’ve never come across the suggestion that the GKWT uses synonyms in broad match before, are you sure?
I can understand them using it in search to try to give the user what might be appropriate, but in KW research, especially for PPC I wouldn’t have thought that they would do that. If so it’s yet another reason to pay little attention to broad match.
Personally, I like to compare all forms, as a large search volume in exact might not go up very much in phrase or even in broad, meaning it’s not worth targeting.
Whereas some lower volume exact searches expand a lot in phrase, giving you the chance to rank for many versions.

Part of the problem is that when we learn KW research it’s all about the numbers, not enough about the psychology behind the words. imho of course! ;-D