In this training video we talk about how Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) removed broad match modifier keyword match types in 2021, but they are still inside old accounts and old campaigns. Many marketers ask, does keeping old broad match modifier keywords in your account hurt your campaigns? Should you delete old broad match modifier keywords? How to bulk edit broad match modifier keywords – change them to phrase match or exact match or even broad match. We discuss this in detail in our video here.

Read Video Transcript Here:

Okay in this google ads training video uh we wanted to cover something that uh it’s it’s still causing some confusion even though it was an update from a while ago uh it’s about google ads removing broad match modifier

So here’s the article from the google ads help section it was actually a while ago but if you’re dealing with a legacy account or if you haven’t been in your google ads account for a long time or you’re you’re redoing an old campaign or you took over a campaign where you still see a lot of broad match modifier keywords inside the account uh this is something you need to know here i’ll zoom in a little bit uh it it looks like this if you remember it had the plus symbol in front of it so you do plus in front of everything meaning it had to include that word whereas phrase match it had to have it in that order can have words in front of it and words behind it so uh if if you’re a beginner and you’re looking at google ads training on youtube or google ads training blogs or ppc training blogs whatever you saw and you see these plus symbols uh that’s that’s actually over a year out of date now so if they’re telling you hey put in these keywords put the plus symbol in there and you’ll your ads will perform really well uh that’s that’s not true you can’t put these in there anymore uh so that’s it’s just an fyi if uh you see any articles or or youtube training on google that has um these plus symbols that that’s out of date you can’t do that anymore it’s it’s over a year old but uh more so for if you’re already familiar with this google got rid of broad match modifier this is more so uh for taking over legacy accounts if you’re wanting to switch from broad match modifier to phrase match and you just need an update on how things have changed or it’s been a while or you took over an old account here’s just some things to remember we’ll put a link to this in the description but it’s pretty much phrase match is going to pretty much absorb broad match modifier it gives you kind of example here if the keyword phrase match was moving services nyc to boston or broad match modifier in google moving services nyc to boston it gives you a rough idea i mean this isn’t perfect about how it would show how it used to show as phrase match and how it used to show as broad match modifier so it shows now it’s pretty much absorbed into phrase i mean it’s not quite as wide as broad match modifier would be but phrase has expanded a little bit to where it’s not literally this and then words in front of it and words behind it and it’s much stricter like it was years ago now google ads has updated uh broad match modifier scrolling zoom in a little bit here to absorb into phrase match so your phrase match matches a little bit wider than it used to inside google adwords which is now called google ads there’s a lot of things changing but yeah so that’s just something to keep in mind i mean if you’re a trained professional and you do this a lot you’re already well aware of this it happened uh over a year ago back when uh if you haven’t managed it since it was called google adwords it’s now called google ads and they expanded phrase match so just something to keep in mind uh and just huge warning if you see any advice that has these plus symbols uh they clearly haven’t logged into google in over a year and they don’t know what they’re talking about so you need to switch to phrase match um it well it technically it says in the article if you have um broad match modifier in there you you can keep them in there if you make any edits it’s going to automatically switch it to phrase match or you could manually switch it to broad match or exact match if you want you can’t make edits and you cannot add new broad match modifier if you have them in there and it’s an old account it’s going to treat it more like phrase match it will still run it it’s just you can’t make any edits to it uh so and you can’t add new broad match modifier inside google adwords which again is called google ads now so just something to keep in mind i mean you don’t have to delete all them or overhaul it uh but if you want to just to to clean up the the google campaigns and clean up the keywords and keep them up to date so you it’s clear to see performance and things like that you can go in and here’s some more info on that they have the see here it is they have a little you can select it select all change match types change broad match modifier keyword so it’s a real easy you can do a select all inside of the account uh keyword in different campaigns ad groups the entire account at the same time if if you just want to clean it up and you want to know how to remove broad match modifier quickly and switch it to phrase just so you don’t have all those plus symbols and it’s kind of a legacy setup they do have that uh bulk editor right in there you could just quickly do it so you don’t have to you know remove plus symbols and delete them or switch to phrase it’s just a really simple one you just select all change match types uh the google ads help article does have more info just if it’s the same uh in broad match modifier and phrase match uh it’s best to really remove the redundant keywords and not double up it just makes the account easier to manage and with all the plus symbols it you know uh broad match modifier or modified broad match is what some people call it it’s just easier to clean it up and you’re not going to be able to add new ones anyway so that’s it answers some questions which one’s preferred in the auction i mean it doesn’t treat phrase or uh legacy modify broad match keywords any or broad match modifier keywords differently as there’s not really an advantage it’s not a google adwords hack or anything like that it does cover what happens to them if they’re similar or if you had different modifications it’s pretty much just talking about it is switching everything over to phrase it’d be better to switch to phrase match it says it doesn’t have any impact on quality score um and how is it different for display and video actually on display and video there never was a broad match modifier it display is treated like broad match this is directly from google we do have display ads training for google we go into that quite a bit if you’re targeting keywords on different websites placements contextual topics all that stuff we have a lot more advanced training on that but uh there never was broad match modifier on display uh same thing with videos it uses exact phrase and broad uh it it doesn’t actually do that more so considered a broad match so i mean it’s actually um rolled out quite a while ago but we’re still seeing uh a lot of advice out there clearly from people that aren’t managing google ads anymore i don’t really know why they’re giving advice on it that they tell you to use broad match modifier or you see blog articles or help articles or or google ads training courses that that have the plus symbol in there so i know a lot of beginners don’t know what that is uh it’s it’s actually removed it doesn’t exist anymore so definitely don’t use that training um it switched to phrase match so just something to remember and again for experience users uh you might just want to clean up these legacy accounts or if you haven’t run it for a while it’s i mean you can leave them in there it’s going to run it as phrase but as you add more keywords and adjust and and optimize your keywords you can’t add broad match modifier to google anymore anyway so that’s that’s kind of what to do with the old broad match modifier keywords that are in there how to change them how to update your account how to get everything up to date for uh 2022 rather than this was rolled out in 2021 so we recommend if it is an older account and you have something performing very well you can just leave it in there for the moment and then when you start modifying it and adjusting it just know you’re going to switch to phrase so you have to adjust your you know if there’s a really good modified broad match broad match modifier in there you could leave if it’s getting conversions and sales and great roi but just know you’re going to have to change it so that’s just something to keep in mind as you’re you’re moving forward with the latest google ad strategies this uh this one’s long gone don’t use it anymore they don’t even let you use it actually within our training we actually address this in in the beginning sections and best practices we talk about broad match modifier how it used to work and then how to switch over to phrase how the new matches work that’s one of the trainings covered have quite a few videos and expanding uh all the different keywords and match types and and then the newest strategies that are working right now so we have a link to that in the description uh but just something i thought everyone really uh had taken care of but i know a lot of people haven’t run google ads in a while or taking over accounts or really just not familiar with this so just wanted to address it make sure that’s covered everybody knows the new switch so that covers everything for this training uh thanks for watching and we’ll see you in the next video alright everyone thanks so much for watching our ppc ads training video uh if you want more videos go ahead and hit the subscribe button like this video if you found it useful and any questions post them in the comments down below we also have additional training uh promos links things like that in the description as well as any other tools for ppc tools or software that we referenced in our videos so thanks so much for watching and we’ll see you in the next video