About duplicate keywords

How punctuation can result in duplicate keywords in Microsoft Advertising Editor .
Important

Flagging duplicate keywords is not available in Microsoft Advertising Editor for Mac just yet. Don't worry, it's coming soon!

A keyword is considered a duplicate if it is the same as another keyword, but its punctuation varies. When you post your changes to Microsoft Advertising, Microsoft Advertising Editor flags duplicate keywords so you can remove them. Removing the duplicate keywords will save you time while still giving you thorough keyword coverage. If one of your keywords is marked as a duplicate there is no reason to manage both of them. You can remove either the duplicate or the original keyword without impacting your campaign.

For example, let's say you type bike-repair as one of your keywords, and then also add bike repair. When you post your changes to Microsoft Advertising, your second entry (bike repair) would be marked as a duplicate. You can delete it and post your changes again.

Below is the list of extra characters that Microsoft Advertising Editor looks for and will ignore. If you use any of the characters below, and have a similar keyword without those characters, you can safely delete one of the keywords without impacting your campaign.

quotation mark (") ampersand (&) hyphen (-)
asterisk (*) percentage sign (%) parentheses (( ))
brackets ([ ]) curly brackets ({ }) period (.)
comma (,) question mark (?) slash mark (/)
backslash (\) colon (:) semicolon (;)
exclamation point (!) apostrophe (') angle brackets (< >)
plus sign (+) number sign (#)
Notes
  • Normalization is not case sensitive; bike repair and Bike Repair are treated as the same phrase.
  • Microsoft Advertising Editor normalizes the possessive form of words, such as Mike's to Mike.
  • Normalization does not treat singular and plural forms of words as duplicates. If you want to use both the plural and singular form of a keyword, bid on each separately. Similarly, normalization does not impact spaces within or between words, or apostrophes that are a part of a name. For example, bikerepair is not a duplicate of bike repair.
  • As you create your keywords, also be aware of the rules they must follow.

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