Google Ads keywords: broad, phrase and exact match, and how to combine lists
Published by the UTM Builder team at Limner.
No symbol means broad match, quotation marks mean phrase match and square brackets mean exact match. This is Google Ads’ own notation, and it also applies when you paste or import a list.
The notation
| Type | How to write it | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Broad | no symbol | running shoes |
| Phrase | in quotation marks | "running shoes" |
| Exact | in square brackets | [running shoes] |
Negative keywords work differently
Google Ads help warns that negative keywords don’t match close variants. Excluding flowers doesn’t stop your ad from showing on a search for red flower, because the singular isn’t covered. In your negative list, write out the variations that matter: singular, plural, and versions with and without accent marks (like cafe and café).
- Negative broad match: blocks when the search contains all the terms, in any order.
- Negative phrase match: blocks when the terms appear in the same order, even with extra words.
- Negative exact match: blocks only the identical search, in the same order and with no extra words.
Combine lists without a spreadsheet
The fastest way to cover a product is to combine lists: what it is (shoes), what it’s for (running, walking) and who it’s for (men’s, women’s). Two lists of 5 terms give you 25 combinations; add a third list of 2 terms and you get 50. Building that by hand is how a typo slips in that nobody notices until it shows up in your search terms report.
To import into Google Ads Editor, Google Ads Editor Help says column headers must be in English for the columns to be recognized automatically, and the match type column can be called Criterion Type. The safest way to get the names right is to export a list from your own account and use its headers as a template.
Campaign,Ad group,Keyword,Criterion Type
Search Shoes,Running,running shoes men,Phrase
Search Shoes,Running,running shoes women,Exact