Keyword Matching Options

AdWords offers a number of keyword matching options. Understanding these options can help to improve the relevancy of your ad placement, leading to fewer ad impressions but a higher CPC.
The keyword matching options are:

Broad match
This is the default option. When you enter a phrase such as sail boat, ads will appear when a user's query contains sail and boat in any order in any part of a query, possibly along with other terms. In addition, broad-matched ads will also show for expanded matches, which are matches with plural (or singular) and other variant forms of the words in a phrase.

Phrase match
When you enter your keywords in quotes for example, "sail boat" your ad will appear when a user enters the search phrase in order as it appears within the quotes, but possibly with other words as well, for example, big sail boat.

Exact match
Exact matches are the least flexible kind of keyword matching. The term that users search for must exactly match the phrase you enter in brackets for example, [sail boat]in order, without any additional terms. Exact matching is the most targeted option among experienced AdWords managers because users searching for terms that make this kind of narrow match are more likely to be interested exactly in your business's offerings.

Negative keyword match
Negative keywords are added to a search phrase, by adding a minus sign in front of the negative keyword, to make a search more precisely targeted. For example, if you target sail boat -blue, your ad will appear when a user searches for sail boat, but not blue sail boat. Negative keywords are an important mechanism for making targeting more precise.