A Guide to Amazon Keyword Match Types 

Amazon is a giant shopping search engine, with an algorithm that shows the most relevant search results to Amazon shoppers based on the search terms they have used. Keyword match types allow us to adjust which customer queries our ads will show against. For this reason, it is important to understand these keyword match types and use them in the most efficient way.

Why You Should Understand The Keyword Match Types

It’s impossible to guess all the phrases a customer searches for when looking for a specific product on Amazon. Keyword match types allow us to combat this challenge, helping us to find new customers and discover new, profitable keywords.

Before discussing the match types, it is helpful to understand the following concepts.

• The plural or singular form of a word is called a close variation.
• Misspellings are not accounted for across any match types and need to be targeted separately.
• The words “when”, “of”, “if”, “and”, and “the” are ignored for all match types.

It is also helpful to know that high-traffic, high-relevance keywords should have higher bids, while broader keywords should be assigned lower bids.

Now that we’ve got those concepts out of the way, let’s talk about the keyword match types available on Amazon; Broad, Phrase, and Exact Match. 

 

Broad Match

Broad match is the keyword match type that has the widest reach. With broad match keywords, our ad will appear when all the keywords are present in the customer’s search query. It can also contain close variants such as plurals or acronyms and additional words.

The words don’t have to appear in a particular order. For example, the broad match keyword “coffee mug” captures a customer search such as “mugs for hot coffee” because it contains both keywords (the word “coffee” and the plural form of the word “mug”) even though they are in no particular order.

The broad match keyword type helps us to reach a larger audience. However, the relevancy of the search terms might be lower which may also lead to a lower click-through rate. It is recommended to keep your bidding low for these keywords compared to the other match types.

Phrase Match

Phrase match keywords have a slightly narrow reach compared to the broad match keywords. For a customer search term to trigger a phrase match keyword, the exact phrase or close variations must be included and be in the same order as the keyword term we have targeted. However, the search query may still contain additional words before or after the keyword term we have added.

For example, a phrase match keyword for “coffee mug” will capture “large coffee mugs”. However, it will not capture “large mug for coffee” because it is not in the same order as the original keyword term.

Phrase matches are great for discovering new keyword variations and reaching more shoppers. 

Exact Match

Exact match is the most targeted keyword match type on Amazon. The search query must be the exact keyword or phrase. It also needs to be in the same order and cannot contain any additional words. Just like the other keyword match types, exact match keywords also target plural variations of the word or phrase.

For example, the exact match keyword for “coffee mug” will capture both “coffee mug” and “coffee mugs”. However, it will not capture “mug coffee”. 

Negative Keywords

Some ad types also offer negative phrase and negative exact match types, which prevent your ads from being showed for a certain search term. These should be used when targeting phrase and broad match keywords.

Negative Exact

If a search query contains the exact phrase or close variations, our ads will not show.

Negative Phrase

If a search query contains the complete phrase we’ve added (in the same order as the keyword term and possibly including additional words) our ads will not show.

 

Final Thoughts

A good advertising strategy should include the use of all three keyword match types. No single match type is guaranteed to perform better than the others and all keyword match types have their own unique benefits. On the other hand, what keyword match types you should use all depends on your confidence level with Amazon advertising and your advertising goals.

It is helpful to keep your keywords as relevant as possible from the beginning. Keep in mind that experimentation is critical and the campaigns you launch need time to gather data. Be patient and try not to make changes too early. Campaign performance always improves with good optimization.

Finally, regardless of what keyword match types you use, checking your search term reports often and optimizing your campaigns accordingly is the key to the success of your campaigns. Targeting high-performing keywords and adding ineffective ones as negatives is highly recommended. As long as you have the time to go through your search term reports twice a month, and keep optimizing your campaigns, using all 3 match types should be most advantageous.

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