the PPC Book|Pay Per Click Blog | Long Tail Thoughts in a Short Tail World

Google has been busy perfecting their automatic billing matching feature the past few months.

While you’re away on Memorial Day travel this weekend, do you mind if we just slip into your account and make some minor adjustments?

We didn’t think you would mind. Have a great weekend!

In all seriousness, this is a fairly controversial feature and should be measured closely.

What to do first:

Turn it off

Opting in and out: Automatic matching is applied at the campaign level. You can opt your campaign in and out of automatic matching on your Campaign Settings page.

Or Leave it on: Do nothing, it’s conveniently already running for you

Should you choose to leave it on, you will want to measure the performance. You can do this via 2 reports:

• Performance statistics: Aggregated performance statistics for automatic matching will appear in each ad group’s Keywords tab, in a line item labeled Automatic Matching Total.
• Search Query Performance report: You can see the search queries that triggered your ads due to automatic matching by running a Search Query Performance report. The queries will be labeled Automatic in the Search Query Match Type column.

Now that I’m thinking of it, this would be a great strategy to try with my clients. While they’re gone this weekend I’ll email them with the great news they’ve been selected for the ‘double management service’ where I increase their billable hours as I see fit (only when it’s relevant, of course). I’ll let you all know on Tuesday how it worked out.