Liam Walsh
Liam is a Co-Director at Intelligency and heads up the agency's Digital Intelligence & Paid Social activity. Over the last decade, he has worked with brands from the world of sports such as Premier League clubs to entertainment such as Channel 4 and Disney.
In Google Ads, choosing between broad match and exact match keywords can make or break your campaign performance. Exact match means your ads show only when people search for your keywords exactly as you’ve set them—great for precision and control. Broad match, on the other hand, lets your ads appear for searches that include variations, related terms, or even synonyms of your keywords—giving you a wider reach but sometimes less relevance.
Knowing which match type drives the best results is key, and that’s where experiments come in.
Simplified Experiment Setup
Google is rolling out a new way to test broad match keywords directly within existing campaigns, aiming to deliver faster results with fewer mistakes. Instead of duplicating your entire campaign to run an experiment, you can now split traffic and budget inside one search campaign.
Google says this new setup avoids common experimentation errors and speeds up insights by eliminating the need to manage separate campaign copies.
Built-In Control and Treatment
The updated system allows you to assign a portion of your existing campaign’s traffic as the control group—using your original keywords—and another portion as the trial group, where broad match keywords are tested alongside your originals.
This feature is available only for campaigns using Smart Bidding, though portfolio bid strategies aren’t supported. The new approach ensures experiments are simpler, more accurate, and easier to manage.
Easier Analysis and Next Steps
Once the experiment finishes, results appear in the “Experiments” tab, now with an expanded “Experiment summary” page for a clearer comparison of control and trial performance. If you’re happy with the results, you can click “apply the experiment” to add broad match versions to your live campaign seamlessly.
This streamlined process makes it easier for advertisers to find the right keyword strategy without the hassle of duplicating campaigns or juggling multiple setups.
