By Fire Huo China Market China SEM SEM February 18, 2020

Baidu launches new keyword match types for PPC

Many advertisers encounter the same challenges when running Baidu PPC:

Difficulties growing traffic
Lack of control
Complex rules and restrictions

To overcome these challenges, Baidu updated its keyword match types at the end of 2019, allowing more control while making its ad system more intuitive and easier to navigate.

Here, we discuss the new match types to help you better understand Baidu PPC.

Baidu PPC: Definition of new match types

Baidu now gives a clear definition of 4 different match types and simplifies the admin process.

Baidu PPC: Exact Match

For exact match, the ad is triggered by search terms that match or have a similar meaning to the bidding keywords.

The Value of Exact Match

More Efficiently Acquire Traffic

Previously, the search terms had to exactly match the bidding terms to trigger an ad. This required advertisers to bid on many synonymous terms, increasing costs and still not even covering all possibilities.

Now, ads can be triggered by synonyms, so advertisers don’t need to bid on multiple keywords that have the same meaning.

Improved Performance and Traffic

Previously, there were only 3 match types, and they were not clearly defined, making it difficult to control traffic quantity and quality.

Ideally, advertisers were to bid on short keywords for long search terms. But, in reality, while advertisers bid on short keywords, so too were the search terms short. And because there was no clear definition of the core meaning of keywords, relevant traffic was missed.

Now that exact matches are clearly defined to include synonyms, advertisers have more opportunities to meet true search intent, facilitating higher quality and quantity of clicks.

Baidu PPC: Phrase Match

For phrase match, words can come before, after, and even in between the bidding keywords to trigger your ad. For example (the bidding keywords are in bold below and search terms are in italics):

ABC XYZ DEF
AB X CD YZ
ABC ZYX DEF

The Value of Phrase Match

Even with insertions or variations, Baidu now recognizes similarity in core meaning between phrase modifications, which creates greater traffic opportunities with less cost spent on multiple similar bids.

Baidu PPC: Intelligent Match + Core Term

For intelligent match + core term, advertisers can tell Baidu a core bidding term. Baidu will intelligently find the search terms associated, which will include the selected core term along with more related terms.