Google Brooooad Search – Response from Rimm-Kaufman

George Michie, VP of Client Services at The Rimm-Kaufman Group, has sent me a detailedgeorge-135x203.jpg and illuminating response to a previous post where I questioned some of his conclusions about Google’s AdWords Broad Match. Thanks for the bak-and-forth, George! Let us know what you think of the issue in the comments.

“Brooooooad match as you ably define it is a nice crutch for advertisers who don’t want to take the time to billed a massive term list with carefully assigned landing pages and targeted copy. The bottom line is Google’s matching algorithms are the best in the world, but they’re no where near as good as those of a smart human, and imho never will be. Language is really hard.

But the proof is in the pudding. Every time we’ve pulled terms off of broad/extended match and put them on phrase or exact match, the conversion rates on those terms have improved. The tough calculus is whether that improvement gives enough ability to bid more and gain higher position and traffic, such that you get better performance and just as much volume. Often it turns into a volume versus efficiency game.

Particularly with the added complexity brought in by the local advertising network, it seems that Google’s brain center has too many ads to choose from within a retailer’s portfolio, and they aren’t making choices with the best interests of the retailer in mind. We think retailers will benefit by shrinking the choices for them until they learn to better prioritize among them.”

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