The Problem With Broad Match keywords in Google Ads
Broad match can be powerful for reaching a wide audience and getting a lot of traffic, but they’re not always ideal for every business—especially smaller, niche companies. Issues that often presents themselves are:
Lack of Specificity in Targeting
Broad match keywords cast a wide net, which means Google can match your ad with a range of search terms. This can include phrases that may not align with your business, especially if you serve a specific or niche market. For example, if you’re a boutique selling handmade dog collars, broad match keywords like “dog accessories” could attract searches for a wide variety of pet products that aren’t relevant to what you offer. With broad match, ads are more likely to appear for searches that are only loosely connected to your core offerings. This often results in clicks from users who may have no real intent to purchase or who are seeking something quite different. For small businesses with limited budgets, this can lead to wasted ad spend on traffic that doesn’t convert.
Increased Costs Without Qualified Leads
Since broad match targets a wide range of search terms, it often leads to more clicks—many of which can be irrelevant. This translates to higher costs per campaign without necessarily increasing conversions. Smaller businesses with tight marketing budgets might find that broad match exhausts their budget faster, yielding fewer qualified leads.
Reduced Control Over Ad Placement
Broad match gives Google more control to decide where your ads appear. This can limit your control over who sees your ads and when, which can be risky for businesses that need to ensure their ads reach a particular demographic or intent level.
Simple and Effective Alternative to Running Only Broad Match
Combine Majority Phrase and Exact with core seed keywords in broad and separate ad groups by narrow themes. Use the search term report to see exactly what the users searched, when they were presented with your ad. If you find search terms that are performing well, add them to your keyword list, aswell as adding irrelevant, expensive, underperforming keywords as negative keywords.
Phrase and Exact Match: These match types give you more precision, ensuring your ads appear for terms closely related to what your audience is searching for.
Negative Keywords: Adding negative keywords filters out irrelevant searches, helping refine your audience and control costs. Check out our post diving deeper into negative keywords and their use case
Smart Bidding with Narrower Targets: Smart Bidding strategies (like Target CPA or ROAS) combined with more specific keywords help your ads show only when Google’s algorithm finds a good match for your goals.
In short, broad match can be a double-edged sword. For niche or local businesses, a strategy focused on narrower, highly relevant keywords often yields better results with less risk of budget drain from irrelevant clicks. Click here to learn more about the basics of setting up your first google ads campaign!
