Semantic search is the future of advertising on Google. In fact, Google continues to change its algorithm in line with how we are searching and how it understands search user intent.
In 2017, Google reclassified exact match type keywords[1] from the syntactic category to the semantic category.
You’ve probably heard semantic search thrown around in discussions related to SEO but most people aren’t sure how it actually works.
So it’s important that you have a good handle on how it works and how it can benefit your campaigns.
As a Google Ads advertiser, understanding match types is key if you want to benefit from semantic search. And it’s essential to craft your Google Ads’ strategy to target the right searchers.
What is semantic search?
Semantic search focuses on the meaning and intent of a users search. It focuses on the principles of language semantics and unlike other search algorithms, it is based on the context, intent, and concept of the search query.
In Google Ads, broad match keywords target semantic searches and incorporate synonyms, misspellings, stemming, plurals/singulars, and close variants. The most important of these are synonyms which are unique to broad match keywords and not other match types like the phrase and modified broad match[2].
Broad match seeks to uncover a wide range of searches and trigger your ads when user intent is matched.
The exact match also focuses on semantic searches but it only matches queries that have the exact intent as your keyword. So, synonyms of your keywords will not trigger your ads with an exact match keyword but will trigger misspellings, close variants, plurals/singulars, and other similar word types.