On the list of news items that web advertisers absolutely need to know: no more exact matches on Google Ad Words. This isn’t going to “change everything” about web marketing, but it will demand a switch in tactics for many advertisers.

Taking advantage of exact match in search engine optimization means that you command a degree of precision in your advertising. With exact match, someone looking up “men’s shoes” on Google would only be led to ads tagged with “men’s shoes.” With phrase match, this searcher will also iwnd up finding adds tagged with “buy men’s shoes” and “new men’s shoes” and “athletic men’s shoes.”

Phrase match even allows Google to match ads with misspellings. On the one hand, this casts a wide net. On the other, taking the option for exact match away from advertisers means that pinpoint-precise advertising strategies may need to be rethought, as you can’t be sure exactly what phrases are leading to your ads and landing pages anymore.

Advertisers will be able to explore a fairly broad range of settings from modifications to synonyms, but after the change goes into effect this September, they will no longer be able to narrow it down to exact search. Google says that singular/plural forms, accents, acronyms, abbreviations and stemmings will always be included in searches from now on.

The truth is that some advertisers won’t even notice the difference, as “close match” options are set as the default for the new system.

Many users may enjoy the broad range of options being made available by the new system, but others may need to rethink entire campaigns. The fact is that a lot of advertisers prefer to be able to have total control over their own output, above all, and this change will certainly interfere with that.

The issue for some comes down to branding: sometimes, a deliberate misspelling, or the use of a word that is very close in spelling to another word, is very important to helping your customers find you. Although the new change is not Earth-shattering, it will create a lot of difficulties for people who use very specific phrases to help their customers find them.

The fact remains that, for 90% of AdWords users, the change will go unnoticed, but it may create some dramatic changes for the remaining 10%.