Yahoo – More Like Ya-Noooo! – Part 2

Exhibit 3 – The Deposit

I know it’s in the terms and conditions when you sign up to a Yahoo Search Marketing account, so perhaps I am being a little unfair, but I still think the hefty deposit you are expected to pay when you open a Yahoo account is extortionate!  Signing up to Google AdWords or Microsoft AdCenter will set you back the grand total of five English pounds.  Opening a Yahoo account for PPC, will set you back £60.  Now admittedly, the fees charged by Microsoft and Google are non-refundable one-off “activation” fees but it is explained that these are to avoid lengthy credit checks and that this is the standard practice for all Pay-Per-Click providers (except Yahoo obviously).

Now, the deposit in your Yahoo account can be used against your first campaign, but along with all the other little inconsistencies presented by Yahoo, I get the uneasy feeling that this just gets cash into the Yahoo pot.  It also suggests that Yahoo aims to make sure you use their service whereas Google and Microsoft, who by charging such a small amounts, don’t coerce you.

Exhibit 4 – The Staff Training

My Yahoo agency team offered to look through my account and suggest a plan of optimisation.  Not being one to turn down free advice, I readily agreed and asked if they could put forward a proposal relating to optimising conversions.  When I received the report, everything pointed towards optimising for more traffic with no reference to ensuring that the traffic was specifically targeted to ensure maximum conversions. When I queried whether any information about conversions would be forthcoming, I was told that Yahoo doesn’t provide conversion analysis as getting people to the website is more important – words to the effect of “conversions depend on the quality of the website rather than the quality of keywords or ads”. Now whilst I agree that having a quality website can significantly improve campaign results, the fact that Yahoo staff have been trained that “Traffic is Key” without any regard whatsoever for the humble conversion, quite frankly staggers me!

OK, now I’ve got that out my system I’m feeling a little better. And as a nod towards a slightly more balanced piece I would like to mention one excellent idea that Yahoo supports. http://www.goodsearch.com/about.aspx is a search facility powered by Yahoo and is set up so that a charity of your choice gets donations whenever you search for something online through the Good Search page. I could cynically mutter about tax write-offs here; but that would just be uncharitable!

I’m beginning to think that Yahoo will stop at nothing to try and keep money in its coffers.  Ok, times are tough, but as I wander through the labyrinth that is Yahoo Search Marketing, I am in awe at the devious tactics designed to make Yahoo more money.

This isn’t to say that the other search engines are taking the Mother Theresa approach to Paid Search Marketing; they’re in it for a profit too. It’s just that Yahoo is so blatant and when you contact them their response seems to say ‘so the system rips you off – what’s your problem”?  Let’s look at the evidence:

Exhibit # 1: Negative Keywords

Negative keywords are one of my favourite tools for ensuring that I get the right kind of traffic to my campaigns (or indeed exclude the wrong kind).

I have had occasions when not using negative keywords would have been campaign suicide (try getting traffic for “upgrading to Domino” (the IBM platform) and not using the negative term “pizza”!).  One of my tasks is to look at the search terms people are entering into a search engine and then use that information to either a) add in new keywords or b) enter negative keywords so that my adverts aren’t shown for an irrelevant topic.

It’s for this reason that I was surprised to discover Yahoo has a cap on how many negative keywords you’re allowed on your campaigns (250).  Whilst I admit 250 negative words does seem sufficient, I’m running a few campaigns where this isn’t enough, meaning that I now can’t qualify my traffic as I would like and may end up paying for clicks that I knew I didn’t want in the first place!

Exhibit # 2: Split Testing Advertisements

It’s been said that the strongest human urge is not to love or hate but to change someone else’s copy. And this is exactly what we thought was happening on our accounts.  Whilst split testing various adverts for a client (in an account to which the client had access), we noticed that some of the test ads had been paused…and to our horror, leaving behind the adverts which had the highest CTRs (click through rates) but not necessarily the best conversion rates.

After a discussion with the client to verify he hadn’t changed a thing (and I’ll admit to still being slightly suspicious – this particular client does enjoy a tinker!) and being in the lucky position of having our own agency Account Manager (an added advantage of using some agencies for your PPC needs) I approached Yahoo direct.  I was blandly told that: “This was an automated system engaging in the ad testing itself” and that the ads that weren’t performing were automatically bumped in favour of the ads that were: problem being that the ads that were being kept were generally the ones that were making the most money for Yahoo, not the one’s making the most money for our client.  You can’t turn off this function in your own account and have to contact Yahoo directly to have it removed – something which we did pretty sharpish!

Unfortunately this isn’t the end of the story. Tune in next week for Exhibits 3 and 4.