Google Adwords is known for having a wealth of matching options for advertisers to use. With Broad, Phrase, and Exact matching you can pretty much define what phrase you want to show up for. But one matching option that goes unnoticed is embedded matching. Here is how normal matching workds:

Broad = Keyword1 Keyword 2

Exact = [Keyword1 Keyword 2]

Phrase =  ”Keyword1 Keyword 2″

So these are pretty straightforward. You show up for the exact matching if someone types your keyword order in the exact order and everything. With phrase matching you are a bit more lenient, but with Broad matching almost anything goes. Now here is how embedded matching workds:

- [Keyword1 Keyword2]

This is very powerful as it allows you to define the exact phrase that you don’t want your ads to show up. So golf for young kids would shoud up if you put “young kids” in the bracket. But the only way your ad won’t show up is when people search for “Young Kid” only. There are many ways to play around with this matching option, but at the end of the day, I have not seen my ads CTR improve dramatically by using this. It is only used to get rid of exact negative terms that you don’t want to show up for. Now I wonder why Google doesn’t talk about this feature very much…

Do you use embedded matching for your campaigns? have you seen decent results? Please share your thoughts.