{"id":3118,"date":"2016-09-01T19:15:20","date_gmt":"2016-09-01T13:45:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/?p=3118"},"modified":"2019-05-31T17:42:21","modified_gmt":"2019-05-31T12:12:21","slug":"adwords-script-identify-duplicate-keywords-including-close-variants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.karooya.com\/blog\/adwords-script-identify-duplicate-keywords-including-close-variants\/","title":{"rendered":"AdWords Script to Identify Duplicate Keywords, Including Close Variants"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s been 2 years since AdWords removed the option to <\/span>exclude close variants<\/span><\/a> from exact and phrase match keywords. But, there are many accounts out there which continue to have close variants as separate keywords in their accounts. \u00a0At best, having close variant duplicate keywords in the account is harmless. You continue to get the all the traffic that matches if any of the close variant keyword. But, at worst, it can give you misleading signals.<\/span><\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n\"identify\n

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The problem with duplicate keywords<\/b><\/h4>\n

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Consider an account that has the following 2 keywords.<\/span><\/p>\n

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[pet food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[pets food]<\/span><\/p>\n

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For the sake of simplicity, consider that all the settings for these keywords are same. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Now, when someone searches for \u201cpet foods\u201d, the search query matches to any of the two keywords as both are close variants of the search query. \u00a0Unless you have these two keywords configured in separate ad groups, with carefully chosen negative keywords, AdWords can match the search query with any of the keyword. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Why is that a problem?<\/h4>\n

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First, <\/span>you will never know the real performance of a keyword<\/b>. \u00a0If the search queries are being matched with multiple close variant keywords, the actual performance is combined performance of all those keywords.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Second, <\/span>your metrics may show a wrong picture<\/b>. \u00a0For a month, if traffic from [pet food] moves to [pets food], you might get worried. You will try to find the answer with bids, ads and other changes that you may have done to the account. \u00a0Such false alarms are undesirable. They can make you complacent and ignore the real ones as well. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Third, <\/span>your ad test may take longer time to arrive at significance<\/b>. If the keywords [pet food] and [pet foods] are in separate ad groups and you are testing a new ad copy, \u00a0you will arrive at a conclusion faster if only of the keyword was getting all the impressions. Having traffic spread across multiple keywords means sub-optimal ad copies will be shown for longer duration, thereby affecting the performance of the account. <\/span><\/p>\n

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What\u2019s the Solution?<\/strong><\/h4>\n

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We bring you the true duplicate keyword detector. \u00a0Most of the existing solutions identify \u00a0presence of one keyword across multiple ad groups. This doesn\u2019t solve the problem of close variants. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The AdWords script developed by us will flag even the close variants as duplicates<\/span><\/p>\n

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This AdWords script identifies the duplicates within same keyword match type. That is the keywords [pet food] in exact match and \u201cpet food\u201d in phrase match are not shown as duplicates.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here are some example of duplicate keywords that our AdWords script will help you identify.<\/span><\/h1>\n

 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Sr No<\/span><\/td>\nDuplicate Keywords<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
1<\/span><\/td>\n[pet food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[pets food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[pet foods]<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

2<\/span><\/td>\n\u201ccheap flight\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201ccheap flights\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201ccheapest flights\u201d<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n

3<\/span><\/td>\n+nyc +italian +restaurants<\/span><\/p>\n

+italian +restaurant +nyc<\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

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Here\u2019s what the resulting sheet looks like. All the duplicate keywords are grouped together, ordered by impressions, highest first. Each duplicate group has single highlighting. You can see the performance from last 30 days for each of those keywords.\u00a0<\/span>Based on the performance data, you can decide which keywords to pause and redirect traffic to other well-performing keyword.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\"AdWords<\/a>\n

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An Important Note<\/b>: \u00a0This script uses a technique called stemming to find out the roots of each word. For example, the words \u201cfood\u201d and \u201cfoods\u201d will both have same root word \u201cfood.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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To get root word for each word, this script contacts an external service, built by Karooya. This scripts break all the keywords in individual words, removes duplicate instances of words and then contacts external service to get stemmed words. For example, let\u2019s assume an account that has the following keywords, in exact match. <\/span><\/p>\n

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[pet food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[dog food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[dogs food]<\/span><\/p>\n

[cat foods]<\/span><\/p>\n

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Here, the unique words are – pet, food, dog, dogs, cat, foods. Stem roots for only these words are retrieved. The actual keywords are never sent to the service. \u00a0Also, these source words are not stored anywhere. \u00a0<\/span>Rest assured, your keyword data is safe. <\/span><\/p>\n

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How to use this AdWords script<\/b>?<\/span><\/h4>\n

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Now that you know what the AdWords<\/span>\u00a0script can do, let’s talk about the script. <\/span>You can get this script here<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are the variables that you can change to customize it to your requirement.<\/span><\/p>\n