Responsive search ads and the match type shuffle

Two announcements in three weeks, and between them they change how a search account gets built.

On 4 February Google said phrase match is absorbing broad match modifier. On 18 February responsive search ads became the default ad type when you create a search ad. Neither one is an emergency. Both carry the same message: Google wants fewer and looser inputs from you, and more of its own machine learning sitting on top of them.

Here is what that means for a local account with one location, a budget measured in thousands rather than tens of thousands, and a phone that has to ring.

Responsive search ads as the default

A responsive search ad takes up to fifteen headlines and four descriptions and assembles them per auction, usually three headlines and two descriptions at a time. Expanded text ads still exist and the ones running in your account keep running. What changed is which form opens when you click new ad, which in practice means most accounts are about to get one whether or not anyone decided to.

Four things we have learned running these in local accounts:

• Fewer ad groups, not more. A responsive ad in an ad group getting forty clicks a month will take a season to learn anything. If your account has eleven ad groups with one keyword each because that was the advice in 2018, that structure is now actively working against you.
• Pin only what you must. Pinning a headline to position one is the right call for a claim you cannot break, a legal line, or the city name you never want dropped. Pinning six of them turns the ad back into an expanded text ad with extra steps.
• Write headlines that are genuinely interchangeable. The system will combine them in ways you did not picture. If headline three only makes sense after headline two, you have written one ad, not fifteen assets.
• Ad strength is not quality score. It rewards variety and discourages repetition. It does not know that “emergency dentist open Saturday” is the only line that matters in your market. Take it as a checklist, not a grade.

The one thing we do insist on: the city or neighborhood belongs in the asset list. Local intent ads that never say where you are get clicks from people three towns over, and those clicks are the expensive kind.

Broad match modifier folds into phrase match

The second change is bigger for anybody who built keyword lists carefully.

Phrase match now covers the same meaning queries that broad match modifier covered, while still respecting word order when the order changes what the search means. Broad match modifier keywords have already started behaving this way. From July you will not be able to create new ones, and the ones you have keep serving.

In practice, phrase match reaches further than it used to. In a local account that usually shows up as three kinds of query you did not want:

• Jobs and careers searches, which love a service plus city phrase
• Do it yourself and how to searches, especially in home services
• Nearby cities you do not serve, and towns with the same name in another state

The fix is the unglamorous one. Negative keywords, checked weekly for the next month rather than quarterly, plus a shared negative list applied at account level so you are not fixing the same thing in four campaigns. If you have both a phrase and a broad match modifier version of the same keyword in one ad group, leave them for now and watch which one takes the traffic. There is no prize for deleting them this week.

Worth remembering while you do this: since last September the search terms report only shows terms with meaningful volume. So the queries reaching further and the report showing less are happening at the same time. You will catch less of it by reading, and more of it by watching cost per lead by campaign and listening to what the front desk says the calls are about.

What we are not doing

We are not rebuilding accounts. We are not deleting expanded text ads that convert, and we are not writing new ones to prove a point either. We are not moving everything to broad match because the automation is said to be smarter now, and we are not turning on every recommendation in the notifications bell, most of which still want you to raise budgets and remove negatives.

The structure that survives both changes is the boring one: a few ad groups with real query themes, one responsive ad and one expanded text ad in each, tight geography, honest negatives, and conversion tracking that counts booked appointments rather than clicks on a phone number icon.

What to do this month

• Count your ad groups. If most of them get fewer than fifty clicks a month, consolidate before you write new ads.
• Add one responsive search ad to each ad group that matters, with ten or more headlines, the city in at least two of them, and no more than two pins.
• Leave your best performing expanded text ads running and let them compete.
• Set a weekly calendar block for search terms and negatives through March, then drop back to monthly.
• Build one account level shared negative list: jobs, free, cheap, DIY, the cities you do not serve.
• Check that every campaign reports a real conversion. This is the quarter to fix it, while insurance benefits are fresh and demand is strong.

Late February is a good time to do this work. Deductibles reset in January, tax refunds start landing, and spring bookings get made in the next six weeks, so an account that wastes less now compounds through the busy season. If you would rather not spend your evenings in the keyword planner, this is what our Google Ads management covers, and for dental practices in particular the biggest gains are usually not in the ads at all but in the page the ad points at.