On February 4, 2021 , we announced upcoming changes to phrase match and broad match modifier . To simplify the keyword portfolio and help advertisers reach more relevant user searches, we are bringing behaviors of broad match modifier (BMM) into phrase match, and phasing out support for BMM. This will be a gradual rollout that will change the back end processing for keyword match types (AdWords API , Google Ads API , Google Ads scripts ) in order to simplify keywords and make it easier to reach relevant customers.How does this change affect the AdWords API, Google Ads API and Google Ads scripts? What impact should advertisers expect?
Advertisers predominantly using phrase match are expected to see an incremental increase in clicks and conversions
This is due to the additional queries to which these keywords will now be eligible to match. For example, “holidays in zambia” as a phrase keyword will now begin to match to “holiday spots in zambia”, which was previously only eligible for BMM.
Advertisers predominantly using BMM are expected to see a slight decrease in clicks and conversions
The majority of this loss is from BMMs where the modifier was only applied to part of the keyword, e.g. tennis +shoes.
In addition we are now considering word order when it’s important to the meaning of the keyword, so some matches that previously matched to BMM will be filtered out.
What should I do? the announcement .forum . David Wihl , Google Ads API Team
