You add a keyword to your first Google Ads campaign: "handyman services." You picture your ad showing to people who type exactly that. Google pictures something much wider, and unless you change one setting, Google's picture wins.
Google calls that setting the match type. It decides how closely a search has to resemble your keyword before your ad can show. For a small budget, it may be the most expensive setting you never noticed. This chapter explains the three options in Google's own words, shows what phrase match can reach for a typical small business, and makes the case for starting on exact match.
Every New Keyword Starts on Broad Match Unless You Change It.
Google's help page is direct about it: broad match is the default, and every keyword you add gets it unless you say otherwise. Type a keyword into a campaign with no symbols around it and you've chosen broad match, whether you meant to or not.
Here's what the three types mean, in plain terms from Google's definitions:
- Broad match can show your ad on searches merely related to your keyword, including ones that don't share its direct meaning.
- Phrase match can show it on searches that carry your keyword's meaning, and that meaning "can be implied."
- Exact match limits it to searches with the same meaning or intent. Google says it gives you "the most steering" over who sees the ad, at the cost of reaching fewer searches.
You choose them with punctuation. A keyword in quotation marks is phrase match: "handyman services." A keyword in square brackets is exact match: [handyman services]. No punctuation means broad.
Phrase Match Isn't About the Phrase. Google Matches the Meaning, Even When It's Only Implied.
The name suggests phrase match is strict: your words, in your order, maybe with a few extra words around them. Google's own definition says otherwise. It matches the meaning, and says that meaning "can be implied."
That one clause is the whole problem for a small account. A meaning Google infers is a meaning you didn't choose. In practice phrase match behaves much closer to broad match than its name lets on, which is why we treat it as broad. On a small budget, there's no reason to stop halfway. Go straight to exact.
None of this makes phrase match useless. An account with plenty of conversions can afford to let Google interpret its keywords and learn from the results. A small account starting from zero can't afford to pay for Google's guesses while it learns.
About One in Seven Searches Containing "Handyman" Isn't Looking to Hire You. Phrase Match Can Still Buy It.
Here's what's at stake even before Google starts implying anything. We pulled every idea Keyword Planner offers in the US for "handyman," and kept the ones that contain the word: 707 searches, about 645,730 a month in total. Every one of them contains your keyword, so phrase match can reach it.
At least 58 of them, at least 90,990 searches a month or about 14% of the total, aren't someone looking to hire your business, by our reading:
- Other handyman companies by name, including the big franchises: "mister handyman" (about 14,800 a month), "ace handyman services" (12,100).
- Marketplaces where people hire through an app or directory: "thumbtack handyman," "yelp handyman."
- Hardware stores and a magazine that happen to use the word, and a few names that aren't handyman businesses at all.
- Someone starting a handyman business of their own.
House cleaning is cleaner, but not clean. Of 113 ideas containing "house cleaning," at least 16 are off-target by the same reading, including six for exterior or outdoor house cleaning, which is pressure washing, a different service with a different customer.
Put a price on it. At the high end of Keyword Planner's US bid range for "handyman services," about $12.54, ten clicks from people looking for a franchise down the road cost about $125. On a $1,500 month, that's a meaningful slice of the budget spent on people who were never going to call you.
Those are only the searches that contain your exact words. Phrase match can go further, to searches Google decides carry the same meaning. You can block some of them with negative keywords (Chapter 5), but on a small budget every click you didn't want comes straight out of the clicks you did.
Exact Match Gives a Small Budget the Most Say Over Who Sees the Ad.
Exact match is where we start every small account. Here's what an opening list in square brackets could be for a handyman (monthly US searches, per Keyword Planner):
- [handyman near me] (about 110,000 a month)
- [handyman services] (49,500)
- [handyman services near me] (22,200)
- [local handyman] (6,600)
- [local handyman services] (4,400)
Repairs with their own page, like drywall repair, get their own ad group (Chapter 4). In your own area those numbers will be a small fraction of the national figures, which is the point: a small budget can afford to cover them well.
We call this first campaign Isolation. The name is ours; Google has no such setting. Two rules define it. Square brackets go around every keyword. A person, not Google, decides each ad group's bid, and Chapter 7 walks through how. The idea is to isolate the searches you already know bring customers and pay only for those.
Exact match isn't strictly word-for-word either. Google will show an exact-match ad on searches it judges to have the same meaning or intent, not only the identical words. That's why you still read your search terms report every week. But the range is far narrower, and you can see and control almost all of it.
There's a second benefit that matters later. When a search is identical to an eligible exact-match keyword, Google says it prioritizes that keyword over any broad or phrase keyword in your Search campaigns. When broad match joins the account, your proven exact-match searches keep their own ads, bids and pages.
What exact match costs you
Exact match has a price too, and it's worth saying plainly: it reaches fewer searches. Google says so in its own definition. Some good customers will phrase their search in a way your list doesn't cover, and on exact match you won't see them at first. That's the trade a small budget makes on purpose. You give up reach you can't afford to test yet, in exchange for knowing what every dollar bought. The search terms report, and later broad match, are how you win that reach back.
In a small market, the trade can bite. If your town only produces a few hundred searches a month for your service, an exact-match list may not spend your budget at all. That's a sign to widen the area or add a service you can deliver, not to switch everything to broad.
Broad Match Pays Off Once Google Has About 30 Quality Conversions a Month to Learn From.
Starting on exact match isn't the same as staying there. The searches you know about are only part of the picture. Many searches are the long, unpredictable ones nobody would think to list, and some of them are excellent customers. Broad match is how an account finds them, and Google pairs it with its automated bidding for exactly that reason.
The catch is that broad match needs something to learn from. Our second campaign, Exploration (again our name), brings in broad-match keywords and a target cost per lead. It doesn't launch until the account is logging roughly 30 quality conversions every month. Some accounts get there around months two or three, and busier ones sooner; many small accounts take longer, and some never do.
Once Exploration is running, check its search terms report every single day for a month. Anything off-target becomes a negative keyword that same day. The handyman list above gives you a head start: other companies' names, marketplaces, hardware stores, "business," "magazine." Competitor names belong on the negative list for good; going after a competitor's name, if you ever do, happens in a campaign of its own.
The report works in the other direction too. When a broad-match search brings in real customers, add it to your exact-match campaign as a keyword of its own, with its own bid. Over time, the searches Exploration discovers become searches Isolation owns. That loop, broad match finding and exact match keeping, is how a small account grows without losing control.
What counts as a quality conversion is the tracking from Chapter 1: calls that last long enough to be real, forms people actually sent, bookings that were confirmed, orders that went through. Thirty button clicks or page views a month don't qualify. Broad match learns from whatever you count, so if the count is padded, it goes looking for more of the wrong people, faster than phrase match ever could.
The 30 is a monthly figure, not a lifetime total. A small account that reached 30 once, in its best month, and then dropped back to a dozen isn't ready yet. Wait until the number holds.
Next: Google Wants 30 Conversions a Month Before You Judge Automated Bidding.
Your keywords are on exact match. Chapter 7 covers how to bid on them by hand, what Google's automated bidding needs before it can do better, and what to do if a small account never gets there.
Every chapter so far, from tracking to budget, landing pages and keyword research, is on the guide's home page.
Match type is on our first-day checklist whenever we take on an account through Google Ads management: the default is broad. Doing it yourself? Open your keywords tab, add a column for match type, and count how many say "Broad match." Those are the ones to look at first.
