Advertisers BEWARE - your phrase match and exact match keywords can trigger from entirely different terms

The service request number was <redacted>. I requested a transcript of the chat but it only sent me the portion that came after my request - thankfully it at least contained the service request number.

Hello HeatherPaske,

Are you able to provide the service request number provided by support?

Thanks in advance.

Did you know that when you create a phrase match or exact match keyword that***(similar but)***different terms can trigger your ad and cost you clicks? This seems to conflict directly with the keyword documentation I am reading. https://advertise.bingads.microsoft.com/en-us/resources/training/keyword-match-options Phrase Match *"triggers your ad when all of the words in your keyword match the words in a user’s search query, in exactly the same order, even if other words are present in the search term."*Exact Match "triggers your ad when the exact words in your keyword appear in a customer's search query, in exactly the same order — including singular and plural forms."

There is a table that lists types of "close variations" of a grammatical nature with examples that seem to be entirely reasonable and understood. However there is no explicit mention that a phrase match or exact match keyword could also be triggered by a "close variation" term...that Bing deems "similar or close". This is what a customer service rep informed me of when I spotted some strange terms being triggered by a phrase match keyword of mine. It was even suggested to me that the responsibility of cleaning up this mess was up to me adding a whole bunch of negative keywords. Can I even trust in that functioning properly? 

I know that when I am planning keywords for a campaign and ad group that my most optimized keywords are phrase match and exact match because they are intended for specifically relevant keywords. I have no expectation that additional keywords are going to be thrown into the pool and cost me clicks that I don't want and that my ad and landing page is not accurate for.

Needless to say I have set aside a lot of time to comb through this disaster, pause keywords and add a number of negative keywords. If you are unhappy about this please upvote my suggestion here.

Thank you for bringing this to our attention HeatherPaske,

We will pass this along to have the keyword documentation updated to more accurately represent the way that the keywords can trigger the ads. In the meantime, if you are seeing a keyword that’s delivering traffic in a fashion that is outside of the norm for the match type that you selected, I would advise contacting our support team in case there’s a technical issue causing this unwanted delivery.

Moving forward, I would absolutely suggest implementing negative keywords, not just for issues such as this, but to proactively minimize the amount of unwanted traffic that you could potentially receive as well.

Thank you for choosing Bing Ads!

Darin P.

Bing Ads Support