Microsoft announced that it is rolling out the inclusion of close variants in exact match for Bing Ads in the U.S. This means exact match will now include minor grammatical variations like plurals, abbreviations, acronyms, spacing, and misspellings.

Microsoft’s Matt Bisson writes on the Bing Ads blog:

Based on our prior testing, we found that exact match close variants helped to drive more highly qualified click volume to your campaigns, improving your presence on the queries that were the most relevant to your products and services. In aggregate, tests resulted in a 2-3% increase in exact match clicks without impacting your ROI.

Exact match close variants has been designed to match your ad to queries that represent exactly the same intent to those you are already using. The close variants feature does the work to optimize for you, ensuring that your ad shows when the query varies only slightly from the keywords you have already selected.

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced that Bing Ads would now include close variants in broad match.

Both moves follow the one by Google to add close variant matching to all exact and phrase keywords, which some advertisers weren’t thrilled with, as they felt it gave them less control over their campaigns.

In other Bing Ads news, there is a new dynamic site link feature, and you can now share negative keyword lists among campaigns.

Image via Bing