Bing Ads Starts Allowing Keyword Variations Once Flagged As Duplicate

Just about anyone who has imported a campaign from Google AdWords or uploaded a new keyword set into Bing Ads has experienced the “duplicate keyword” error that occurs when two keywords in an ad group have subtle differences like hyphens or accents.

That’s because Bing Ads removes extra characters from keywords in a process called “keyword normalization” which then creates the duplication.

Bing also normalizes search queries. For example, if you bid on the keyword “bike repair” and a user searches for “bike-repair”, your ad could show because Bing removes the hyphen from the search query.

Bing isn’t changing keyword normalization for search queries, but today the company announced it will relax the restraints of keyword normalization in Bing Ads. This is good news for advertisers, and the change comes at their behest. On occasion keywords variations can actually have completely different meanings. Other times they may seem to display similar user intent, but perform quite differently.

Starting now, advertisers will be able to start including multiple versions of keywords through Bing Ads Editor and the Bing Ads Upload API.

For now, users won’t be able to add keyword variations through the Web interface, but that will be coming. Once keywords are uploaded, though, advertisers can edit bids and match types on those keywords from the Web UI.