PPC Blog » Yahoo

Yahoo Promoting Viagra

PPCblogger — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 11:34:53 +0000

Quite an amusing spot by Jeremy over at PPC Discussions. Looks like the YSMBlog (“nofollow” for you I don’t want to be linking to bad neighbourhoods) has been hacked (another WP exploit example) and currently has a ‘buy viagra’ link hidden in a noscript tag.

Actually what I found interesting is that it took this long for anyone to realise. Check out Archive.org from back in August ’07.

Looks like they were promoting a few things ;)

“>Cheap Phentermine
“>Buy Viagra Online
“>Buy Norvasc
“>Buy Renova
“>Buy Levitra
“>Valium
“>Buy Zyprexa
“>Fioricet
“>Buy Alprazolam
“>Adderall
“>Buy Paxil
“>Lipitor
“>Buy Zithromax “>Order Viagra Online
“>Didrex
“>Order Zovirax
“>Buy Prozac
“>Butalbital
“>Order Cipro

(I cut the number of links in half, it made the post massive!). Timely considering SEL article about the display:none feature of CSS.

Yahoo Don’t Even Rank Their Own Directory

PPCblogger — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 17:40:05 +0000

Yahoo rant.

Run a search for ‘Directory’ on Yahoo UK. What kind of results are these? Lycos top, Wiki twice, no sign of Dmoz or their own Yahoo directory, UK or .com on the first page. If the algo can’t do it, surely you need a little manual intervention Yahoo?

In fact, even a search for ‘Yahoo directory‘ does not bring back their actual directory at the top.

If ever a handjob was needed…

Yahoo Testing New Quality Based Ranking Algo In UK

PPCblogger — Thu, 24 May 2007 12:53:17 +0000

An Email from Yahoo has been sent out to UK advertisers to explain that they are currently testing the forthcoming ‘quality based’ ranking model in some keyword markets. So if you spot your keywords in different positions to those in the bid landscape, this could well be a vertical in the trial.

The full email details -

Yahoo! Search Marketing is constantly striving to improve both the advertiser and customer experience, with the goal of providing the most relevant and targeted listings as users search, click and travel across the Internet.

To accomplish this, we constantly test new implementations and matching technologies. To help ensure we launch our new ranking model successfully we have started running a limited test across our UK advertiser listings in which the display order of Sponsored Search listings in some keyword markets is based on factors other than bid.

In determining listing position, the test will take into account a particular ad’s click-through rate, as well as other relevancy factors. The total amount of Sponsored Search traffic that we are providing to you should not change, but due to optimisation of certain keywords you may see traffic volume increase or decrease depending upon the relevancy of your offers and other optimisation factors.

As always, we encourage you to track your results from individual keywords, so that you can manage your bids and creative for maximum return-on-investment.

Our new Sponsored Search system will be rolled out in the UK soon, beginning with advertiser migration later this quarter. We will be contacting you with more specific information as the rollout date approaches.

Tim Mayer On Panamas New Ranking System

PPCblogger — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 19:39:38 +0000

There’s an interesting article over at Search Engine Land which discusses what Panamas new quality based algo means for searchers and advertisers alike.

Tim Mayer, Director of global web search at Yahoo says -

“The system is going to cause advertisers to work harder to make their listing more relevant, just as SEO’s have been doing in the algorithmic section for a long time”.

In theory, great news for agencies and experts alike then, but perhaps not great news for your average advertiser or business owner?.

Tim Mayer also gives some pointers about Pamanas new algo and what we should be looking out for -

…the algorithm analyzes both advertisement and landing page copy, in much the same way web pages are analyzed to determine their ranking in non-paid search results. At this point, more emphasis is being placed on ad copy than landing page copy, but landing page quality will become more important in the algorithm over time.

Yahoo is also looking at “advertiser information” and “advertiser industry segment,” but is saying little about what this really means. Mayer said that brand is an important factor here—when your search terms include a brand you’ll more often see an advertisement from the brand owner get top rankings.

And the reason behind the new quality based algo?

Well they are somewhat down on how much they get per search in comparison to Google. From the NY times -

Citigroup Investment Research Director Mark Mahaney estimated that in 2006, Google made 4.5 cents to 5 cents on every search, while Yahoo generated only 2.5 cents to 3 cents a search.

In otherwords, Yahoo will now be able to use the same lack of transparency Google and MSN already do to increase the amount of money they receive per search under the guise of ‘improved quality of ads’.

Yahoo Offering £50 In Credit On Sign Ups

PPCblogger — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 22:32:36 +0000

The search engines do this quite a lot these days and now Yahoo are offering £50 in credit on new account sign ups. You do need an initial deposit of £60 for a new account though.

If you haven’t experimented with Yahoo pay per click yet, now might be a good time. This promo applies only to new UK accounts.

The all important link with promo code (GB0287) can be found here.

New Yahoo PPC Keyword Tool In Pipeline While Wordtracker Offer Free Version

PPCblogger — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 18:32:26 +0000

There’s been a whole host discussion over the past couple of weeks about the current problems with Yahoo (Overtures) keyword tool and its slow death.

Well, it seems a Yahoo rep has confirmed that a new Yahoo keyword tool is in the pipline and should be released later this year. YahooSarah replied to a thread over at the WMW forums -

I wanted to confirm that YSM’s public keyword research tool (formerly known as the Overture’s Keyword Selector Tool- KST) continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed. We do have plans to offer a new public keyword research tool, which would be hosted through Yahoo! and available to our API partners. We plan on making this new tool available later this year. If you are an advertiser, I’d suggest using the keyword research tool within our platform (the old or new one).

Good stuff. On another positive note, Wordtracker have released a nice free keyword tool themselves. They have a useful information page that explains how the tool estimates daily search volume for any given keyword. The basic rundown is -

Every day, on average, we collect about 3.32 million search terms from Dogpile.com and Metacrawler.com, who according to Netapplications.com account for 0.63% of searches across all engines. By combining these two figures, we estimate that the total daily searches across all engines is 527.8 million.

Hat tip to Aaron Wall for that one.

Yahoo Offering One Time Only Bulk Uploads?

PPCblogger — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 19:09:29 +0000

A thread picked up by SEroundtable highlights that Yahoo are offering a one time only courtesy bulk upload or conversion from any other ad platform (Google, MSN etc) to a Yahoo account.

The thread is based around US advertisers who are having issues when uploading keywords into Yahoos Panama. However this seems to be extended to any advertisers in the States and I believe this might also be applicable to advertisers in the UK regardless that Panama has yet to hit our shores. If your a new advertiser and want a Google account conversion, then why not ask…

Yahoo! representative, YahooSarah, said:

The bulk upload functionality is usually extended only to gold-tiered (or higher) accounts. However, we offer a one time courtesy of submitting your keywords to us. Simply send a copy of the .csv export of your keywords from your campaigns with other ad networks to our support center, which we will convert and upload the data into the account; or, send a copy of the file that you have converted, and we will upload that data into the account for you.

Yahoo Testing Shorter PPC Adverts Again

PPCblogger — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 18:49:29 +0000

Yahoo are testing shorter adverts again here in the UK where the advert description line is being truncated from 190 characters to a maximum of 70.

Search marketeers for sometime have called for the big players to standardise accross the industry, to make lives a little easier and I am personally for the change. So perhaps this is just further testing for changes with the upcoming new ad platform?.

Microsoft To Acquire Yahoo In 2007?

PPCblogger — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 17:29:27 +0000

There’s a interesting post over at the Shoemoney blog where Jeremy Shoemaker gives 10 reasons why he believes Microsoft will make a move to purchase Yahoo.

Keeping the 10 reasons Shoemoney gave short and sweet, they are;

The Search Algorithm

Overture Yahoo Search Marketing

Yahoo Publisher Network

Flikr

Del.icio.us

The People

Video

Community Properties

Business Directory

Yahoo Just Cleaned The House (reshuffle)

Will it happen? To me it seems like a no brainer… If Microsoft hopes to compete in this new internet economy (contextual ads) they need a bigger chunk of the search market. Yahoo is the only option IMO.

What do we think?

Yahoo To Reduce Minimum CPC To 5p

PPCblogger — Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:39:13 +0000

My Yahoo rep has confirmed that they will be reducing the minimum cpc from 10p to 5p on their ad platform here in the UK on (or around) the 19th of January. This is positive news for advertisers who have previously been put off by the minimum 10p bid. The change will be introduced on the current platform before any migration to the upcoming Panama (or Yahoo Search Marketing 2.0) product which is expected around the end of Q1 in the UK.

However, in a rather strange move, Yahoo are not set to completely change the base cpc bids from 10p. There will still be a small number of ‘keyword categories’ (expected to be in the region of 150K terms) that will remain subject to the original base 10p bid. Categories with high cpc’s such as finance are expected to be those kept to 10p.

I would think implementing a complete change of bid would be far easier than trying to run keywords with different minimum bids, so its a little strange. I don’t have access to the full list of categories, but it would seem the high cpc keywords will be those kept to a base 10p bid. Although you could argue that changing bids on these keywords would not have a huge effect on overall average bids & potential revenue to Yahoo due to the small cpc decrease and intense competition, it could also be seen as a form of revenue protection.

I am hoping for a complete removal of minimum cpc with the upcoming introduction of quality based algo. But we will have to wait and see if this ever happens.