The thing nobody explains about keywords

The keywords you add to your ads account and the keywords Jo Public uses when they search online for a product or service are not the same thing. Well they are, but not in the way you think.

You pick a keyword because it describes what you do. Something like "family solicitor Reading" or "accountant Wokingham." You assume your ad will show when someone searches for exactly that. Sometimes it will. But depending on how that keyword is set up in your account, it might also show for searches that have nothing to do with someone looking to buy your product or service.

"How do I find a good solicitor." "Why do I need an accountant." "Where to get free legal advice." None of those people are at the same point in the process. Some of them are nowhere near it.

That's not a flaw in the system. It's just how match types work, which is the thing that gets glossed over.

There are three main match types in Google Ads. Broad match casts the widest net and gives Google the most rope to decide when your ad shows. Phrase match is tighter — your keyword needs to be present in the search, though other words can appear around it. Exact match is the narrowest — the search needs to match your keyword closely for the ad to trigger. And negative keywords? That's another blog post.

The problem is that broad match is now the default in a lot of situations, and Google has been quietly expanding what it considers relevant. So if you've set up keywords without thinking about match types, there's a reasonable chance you're running broader than you intended.

So where do you look?

The search terms report shows you what's actually been happening. Not what you thought you were targeting, but what people actually typed. It's where I go AH HA.

A negative keyword tells Google not to show your ad for a specific search. So if you're a solicitor and you keep appearing for "how to become a solicitor," you add that as a negative and it stops. It's the tool that gives you back some control over who actually sees your ad. I'll cover this properly in another blog post.

Most accounts I look at either don't have negative keywords at all, or have a short list that was set up at the start and never added to. The search terms report keeps growing. The list doesn't.

The gap between what you think your keywords are doing and what they're actually doing is usually where the budget goes.