September 6th 2018, Google announced a change to there variant matching technology which will now see variations of your keywords that share the same meaning including implied words being targeted in your keyword set.
Powered by Google’s machine learning, exact match will now match with the intent of a search, instead of just the specific words. This means your exact match keywords can show ads on searches that include implied words, paraphrases, and other terms with the same meaning.
Google also provided the below example on Thursday which explains the new addition to this technology.
Let’s say you’re marketing for a travel business. If you’re using the exact match keyword [yosemite camping], your ads may show on other terms like “yosemite campground,” “campsites in yosemite,” or “yosemite national park ca camping.”
In each case, the intent of the search still matches the original keyword: to go camping in Yosemite National Park. However, you wouldn’t show on terms like “yosemite hotel” or “best yosemite camping,” because while both refer to staying at the park, the intent is different. Instead, these terms would match to the broad match version of this keyword.
What does this mean for your Google Ads campaigns?
It’s been reported that this variant expansion change will roll out throughout October for all English keywords and other languages will follow shortly afterwards.
AI technology is the way of the future and Google have invested heavily to ensure mass adoption of this technology throughout there advertiser base. The new technology will mean that you will now reach more relevant search terms with out doing the heavy lifting of keyword research and manual targeting.
So it will be easier to discover more golden nuggets in regards of highly converting keywords as the AI will be discovering relevant terms and bidding on these for you.
What you should look out for though is irrelevant terms coming through your search query reports as you automate your campaigns further. It’s important that you keep a closer eye on the search terms report to eliminate wastage of your budget. If you haven’t yet implemented an effective negative keyword strategy, now would be the time to do so. It’s quite important that you utilize negative keywords effectively as you may receive some irrelevant exact match variations.