Understand Search Match

Appear for queries without adding keywords to your search
results campaign

Search Match is a default feature of Apple Search Ads Advanced search results campaigns that makes it easy to get ads up and running in just a few minutes. With Search Match on, your ad may be matched automatically to search terms without you having to figure out all keyword possibilities and actively bid on them.

Search Match uses multiple resources to match your ad to relevant searches on the App Store, including the metadata from your App Store listing, information about similar apps in the same genre, and other search data.

We recommend creating a discovery campaign with Search Match enabled to help you reach a wider audience and mine for popular search terms. You may then want to consider adding certain terms to your ad group and setting specific bids for them.

If you need to disable Search Match at any point, follow the steps below.

  1. From your Campaigns dashboard, click the campaign that contains the ad groups in which you'd like to disable Search Match.
  2. Within the Ad Groups dashboard, click the appropriate ad group.
  3. Click the “Edit ad group settings” link located in the upper-right side of the page.
  4. Click the toggle button located in the Search Match section. The blue color will disappear once the feature is disabled.
  5. Save your changes and repeat for any additional ad groups in which you'd like to disable Search Match.

If you’re using Search Match, you may also want to consider including negative keywords to ensure that your ad doesn’t appear for certain search terms.

Learn more about negative keywords