Although Google has been lumping volumes and bids together for similar keywords for a couple years now, it has really been kicked up a notch since June, with a much more liberal interpretation of “close matching variation”.

Of course, Google is doing this for our benefit, right?

This is what Google has to say about close keyword variations.

After reading an article from Sam Nemzer on the Moz blog about a month ago, where he dove into what this really meant for SEO 1, I was intrigued and wanted to see some of these examples for myself.

The SEO community has been complaining pretty heavily as we’ve now had even more reliable data stripped from us 2, but after reviewing some of these examples, I’m sort of surprised the PPC community isn’t more up in arms. 3After all, it’s their dollars Google is making them spend on, in some cases, completely irrelevant keywords. Take a look for yourself.