Tag: Yahoo

This past weekend I sadly removed all information about Yahoo Search Marketing from my website. I have been a Yahoo Search Marketing Ambassador for years and have offered Yahoo PPC set up and management services. MSN adCenter however is taking over the Yahoo PPC control panel and is already serving Bing ads and Bing search results on Yahoo.

A sad goodbye to Yahoo Search Marketing. I’ve seen plenty of changes over the years and have always felt that Yahoo PPC was a good product and in many cases had strong conversions for businesses who advertised there. But, I am looking forward to the changes that are ahead as Yahoo and Bing merge.

One thing that I have found as the transition from Yahoo to Bing continues this month is that the automated import from Yahoo to adCenter can be problematic for accounts that do not have a good account structure and which have not readied their ads. In one case that I just recently saw for a very large program, the keywords all came over but nearly none of the ad text imported.

Before you click to import your account to adCenter, make sure to review your Yahoo ad titles you must be at 25 characters including spaces to have your ads import. If you are at 40 which is what Yahoo had allowed, your ad text will most likely not import into adCenter.

So goodbye Yahoo we’ll miss you, but be savvy and prepare your Yahoo account before you migrate to adCenter. By the way, Bing says that most accounts will be fully migrated by the end of October or so. Bing and Yahoo want to have completed the change before holiday promoting and shopping for year end take place. – a smart move!

This past week we have helped more clients migrate their advertising programs into Yahoo Sponsored Search. With the escalating costs of Google AdWords, significant drop in AdWords ability to deliver conversions, and the quality score algorithm changes, Yahoo is looking better all the time.

Yahoo has a very good ad serving program, is a good value for the money, and has consistently supplied quality conversions. Yahoo’s only problem is that not everyone uses Yahoo as their search engine; meaning that you get less “reach” when you advertise on Yahoo versus on Google.

We have found however, that as a supplement to your Google AdWords program, Yahoo can deliver the lead conversions that you are looking for at nearly one third to one half less per click than you will pay on AdWords. Additionally, if you are the type of person who really wants to manage your own advertising account versus hiring a professional manager, like us, then Yahoo is an excellent place to advertise and even start checking our pay per click for the first time.

Yahoo has a very easy to understand ad control panel, provides quality keyword discovery tools, and is very easy to manage on an ongoing basis. Although the Yahoo program is less sophisticated than Google’s, it is easy to use and makes getting up and running fairly painless.

With AdWords upping the ante in regards to a big jump in click costs since the algorithm change on 9-15-08, more of our clients are lowering AdWords budgets to fund a jump into Yahoo. Some are simply allocating more dollars for Yahoo and some are stealing AdWords money to fund new Yahoo accounts.

AdWords had system maintenance on Saturday 10-11. but it is still to early to say if this was an adjustment to the highly unpopular quality score update they did in September, or an additional tweak to wring more money from your pocketbook. Whichever it is, we’ll be sure to let you know as we start to see the impact in the nearly 35 accounts that we manage in a wide variety of business sectors.