Earlier this month, Google announced some big changes rolling out to phrase and broad match modifier (BMM) keyword match types. Beginning today, 2/18, phrase match will now behave like BMM – leaving the traditional BMM match types redundant and to officially sunset this summer. Now you may be wondering, how will this impact paid search campaigns and ad spend?
We expect this change to lead to an increase in traffic on any phrase match keywords and a slight decrease in traffic on any BMM keywords. Ultimately, with our search campaign structure and utilization of smart bidding strategies, we should see a spend shift towards phrase match with stable or improved performance.
As part of our strategy across our search portfolio, we have fully paused BMM keywords to avoid overlap and have ensured that any paused keywords were accounted for in phrase match. As we continue to monitor this change, our analysts are proactively shifting spend as needed and watching closely to ensure that performance remains unwavered.
Historically, more emphasis was put on bidding and targeting by match type, when manual CPCs ruled the SEM world. Now, with the strides in machine learning, the focus is on choosing the right smart bidding strategies and campaign structures that improve quality score and allow AI to work its magic. Our analysts are here to focus more time on important strategy decisions that will largely impact performance, and choose the right smart-strategies for AI to do the rest.
