Last week, following a report from GroupM Search CEO Chris Copeland, published by AdAge, we talked about some improvements in match types coming to Google: “near exact” and “near phrase”. The basic gist is that these new types will allow advertisers to take advantage of misspellings (on the searcher’s part) and plurals.

At the time, a Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “We actually haven’t announced anything on this and don’t have any more info to share at this time-we frequently beta test new features with agency partners.”

Now, the features have been officially announced. Google gives the following examples of how things will work:

1. waterproof sunblock     buy bollard cover     single serving coffee maker
2. waterpoof sunblock      buy bollard covers    single serve coffee maker

Right now, only the first row would be considered matches, which would trigger the appearance of an ad, but once the features launch, the second row would be included as well. This should open up the door for a lot more impressions.

“People aren’t perfect spellers or typists. At least 7% of search queries contain a misspelling, and the longer the query, the higher the rate,” says AdWords Product Manager Jen Huang. “Even with perfect spelling, two people searching for the same thing often use slightly different variations, such as ‘kid scooters’ and ‘kid’s scooter’ or ‘bamboo floor’ and ‘bamboo flooring.'”

Huang shares a quote from one of the testers on the Inside AdWords blog:

“Previously we spent a lot of time making sure to include hundreds of versions of brand misspellings and to include plural forms of all our keywords,” said Dana Freund, Senior SEM Manager at GameDuell. “With the improvements to exact and phrase match we don’t have to worry about these keywords anymore. We get more relevant impressions for a smaller number of keywords, and it’s been a significant time saver for us.”

Google says the changes will actually go live in mid-May, but for the time being (over the coming weeks), they’ll be rolling out controls for advertisers to get prepared. These, Google says, will allow advertisers to adjust keyword matching options, and will be found under “Advanced Settings in Campaign Settings. From that section, you’d go to Keyword Matching Options.

More on the features soon.