Google Ads has announced updates to brand controls and its search ads query matching. Let’s have a look at all three announced features.
Announcements
Brand Inclusions
Just a couple of days ago, Brand inclusions were spotted. Now, Google shared more information about this feature, that was previously called Brand restrictions.
The setup method has changed. Now, instead of using up to 10 specific brand terms, you need to add a brand list (introduced in June 2023).
This feature will only be available for broad match and will require the use of smart bidding simultaneously.
A recommendation may appear to advertisers who could benefit from upgrading to brand inclusions in broad match.
Brand Exclusions
Brand exclusions enable you to exclude specific brands and were first spotted in Performance Max in April 2023.
Google announced their expansion to Search network to all match types and Dynamic Search Ads.
They will block traffic from unwanted brand terms, misspellings, and variants.
Misspelled Searches Blocking
Did you know that there are at least 1.5 million ways to misspell “YouTube” on Google Search?
Google announced that there is no need to add each misspelled version as a negative keyword anymore. Now, they will include them automatically.
This change will help us gain more insights into “Other search terms” as misspellings were often hidden there since they didn’t meet privacy thresholds to appear in the search terms report.
With this change, we get to see 9% of search terms previously hidden under “other”.
Visual Guide to How It Works
Check the following image to learn how the new features work.
Read the official announcement: Maximize performance on Search with updates to query matching.
