New at AdWords: Automatic Keyword Misspelling Matches

AdWords advertisers no longer need to develop keyword lists with misspellings, plurals, and other variants. In the coming weeks, Google will enable its users to automatically do the keyword matching the same way the search engine does with its organic search results.

According to Jen Huang, AdWords’ product manager for this functionality, the automatic keyword misspelling matches has been the most-requested feature. They decided to enable this function in hopes that this would be beneficial to both advertisers and consumers.

Focusing on User Intent

According to Google, up to 7 percent of search queries include misspellings; and the longer the search query is, the more susceptible it is to error. On the other hand, those who properly spelled their search terms use variations to find the content that they’re looking for. For example, one would use “gold coin” while the other would type “gold coins.”

With Google’s focus on user intent, both variations can come up with the same result. In the end, search engine users will be pleased to get the results that they want even if it’s not a precise match of what they’ve typed. Thus, the search engine decided to extent this behavior to advertisers and marketers.

Different Variations and Impact

Other than misspellings, the new AdWords behavior will take five different variations into account:

• Singular or plural forms
• Stemming
• Accents
• Abbreviations
• Acronyms

Google has been testing this function to selected advertisers and noticed an average of 3 percent increase in search clicks based on comparable cost-per-clicks. Dana Freund, senior SEM manager of online gaming community GameDuell, revealed that they spent a lot of time incorporating multiple brand versions and forms of all of their keywords.“With the improvements to exact and phrase match, we don’t have to worry about these keywords anymore. We get more relevant impressions for a smaller number of keywords, and it’s been a significant time saver for us.”

However, it’s possible that its performance will vary from one advertiser to another.

Availability to Advertisers

With the new feature comes a new interface. Users can find the automatic keyword misspelling matches when they check out the Campaign Settings tab. From there, marketers should click the Advance settings and then select the Keyword matching options.

By default, matches will include “plurals, misspellings, and other close variants.” However, it will change when the new web interface is rolled out to all users in the coming weeks. It will also be available in the next version of Google’s application programming interface that will be released later this month.

In addition, users can opt out of this function if they want finer control of their feature. The actual matching won’t start until mid May, giving users ample time to disable the function if they like.

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