← Glossary
What is broad match?
Broad match lets Google show your ad for any search it judges related to your keyword, including terms sharing no words with it.
It's the widest net available and the current default recommendation from Google — but that recommendation assumes conversion tracking and enough conversion volume for the bidding system to steer it, commonly cited as around 30 conversions a month.
Without that data the system has no way to tell a good match from a bad one, and a small budget disappears into loosely related searches. This is the single most common way new advertisers lose money on Google.
If you do run broad match, negative keywords stop being optional. They're the only mechanism preventing the net from catching things you'd never want to pay for.