Recently, Google made the broad match modifier available globally. Now that it is offered in the US, how can you use it in your campaigns? In short, it will allow you to be somewhere in between broad and phrase match with your keywords.  Currently, with broad match Google automatically runs your ads on what it deems “relevant” keywords, even if they aren’t in your actually keyword list.  For example, if you have the broad match keyword red cars, your ad has the potential to show when a user searches for blue cars, because broad match is just that: broad. But, changing all keywords to phrase match makes it nearly impossible to capture every version of a keyword, including plurals, misspellings, and countless other variations.

With modified broad match, you can still get the benefits of your ad showing on variations of your keyword without showing for completely different keywords. So, by adding a “+” in front of one (or many) of your keywords, AdWords will make sure that that keyword is within a user’s search query and only show for that word or a variation of (such as plurals, misspellings or acronyms).  For example, +red cars will ensure that a user searching for blue cars wont trigger your ad, your ad will only show for search terms such as red car, red cars, red vehicle, and red automobile.  And adding the “+” to both keywords, such as +red +car will trigger your ad on keywords such as red sport car and red sports cars.  More examples can be found this blog post from RKG.

This image from the Google AdWords blog post about the new broad match modifier illustrates each match type:

Google AdWords Keyword Match Types