Well, officially, tomorrow starts the holiday gift buying season. We all want to cash in on these next two months. That might include Google. I am hearing rumors at Search Engine Watch Forums that Google is expanding the controversial AdWords Automatic Matching keyword technology. Currently in beta, Automatic Matching was expanded already once, back in May of this year.
What is automatic matching in AdWords? In short, automatic matching is a new algorithm used to automatically target new keywords, not included in an advertiser's set keyword list, in order to use up all of the advertisers allocated budget. So if you are advertising for [Adidas shoes] and you have $10 left in your ad budget for the day, Google might decide to show your ads for search terms as far off as [slippers]. Like, I said above, there is a lot of controversy around it.
Now we are hearing rumors from substantial AdWords advertisers that they are pushing this beta test on additional advertisers. Literally right before the holiday season. Accucast has a screen capture of where this setting is found in AdWords.
So beware and watch your budgets carefully, especially at this time of the season.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
