Big Win in Traffic Quality from Yahoo! Network 

The first maneuver, provided by Yahoo, helps overcome the problem many of us face with the quality of Yahoo’s network partners. In search, a ppc advertisement is not only displayed on a primary search engine; i.e. Google or Yahoo, but also displayed on a search engine’s network. A network can include hundreds of partners from smaller search engines, large portals, and domain name parkers. Google’s search network (very different than the content network) is comprised of select partners that include AOL, Information.com, Earthlink, and a few other well-known web properties. Overall, the partners seem to drive similar traffic compared to Google.com. In AOL’s case, the traffic actually seems to convert a little better. Because Google exercises careful discretion over the sites they allow in the search network, their traffic quality has remained high. However, the same cannot be said for Yahoo. The Yahoo network is made up of hundreds of websites, adware companies, and domain name parkers. Historically, their partners have performed much lower than Yahoo.com.  

Yahoo now lets an advertiser exclude up to 250 network partners. This is a big win - allowing an advertiser to maintain a premium position on websites that convert and all together remove ads from sites that do not convert. Next logical question: how do you find the conversion rates of the network sites? 

Since Yahoo doesn’t provide a report detailing which partners drive traffic, you must use a web analytics package or a search marketing analytics package (i.e WebMetro’s DSMM Platform). Once you isolate all of the websites driving clicks and their corresponding returns, you can now exclude undesirables from your account and stop receiving traffic from partners driving less then acceptable returns. This has an immediate impact on ROI that can either directly contribute to the bottom line or be re-invested into other growth opportunities. 

Before Yahoo made this enhancement to its direct traffic center, it was not possible to remove a website from the search distribution. And if you turned off distribution, you lost out on some great traffic from search engines like yahoo.com. As a result, in order to meet your ROI goals, you were forced to lower the bid across all partners thus lowering your position on the premium partners like Yahoo.com which then caused a decline in traffic. Yes, ROI increased but at the expense of volume.  Since so many advertisers still believe this is the case, those embracing the new enhancement have a very nice competitive advantage.  

Adding Negatives for Google’s Broad Match 

Although the second maneuver isn’t actually new, the need for it has increased dramatically. The tactic, from Google, is the ability to add negative keywords to ensure ads are not displayed for queries that do not align with business or ROI objectives when bidding on broad match. 

This is Google’s explanation of Broad Match: 

“Broad Match - This is the default option. If your ad group contained the keyword tennis shoes, your ad would be eligible to appear when a user's search query contained tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms. Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations. For example, you ad might show on tennis shoe or tennis sneakers. Run a Search Query Performance Report to see what keyword variations trigger your ad.” 

After reading the explanation, an advertiser should be able to conclude their ad will show for the following terms:

 ·         Free Tennis Shoes

·         Sneakers to play tennis

·         Girls Shoes for playing tennis

·         A Cleaner for Tennis Shos 

As you can see the, ad is mapped to misspellings, variations of “shoe” (i.e. sneaker), and longer queries that contain both “tennis” and “shoe.” Let’s say you represent an athletic shoe store that does not sell cleaners or have any free shoes. To ensure you don’t pay for users typing in “Free Tennis Shoes” or “A Cleaner for Tennis Shos,” the smart move is to add at least two negatives to your campaign – “free” and “cleaner.”  

Unfortunately, by doing this and only doing this, you leave yourself open to a potentially big mess. Going back to Google’s broad match explanation, one crucial part deserves more attention: Your ads could also show for singular/plural forms, synonyms, and other relevant variations 

“Other relevant variations” basically means: by opting into broad match you allow Google to display your ad for any search term Google finds relevant. While I cannot provide specific client examples due to confidentiality agreements, I will extrapolate based on real experiences what might display for Google’s “tennis shoes” example: 

• Shoes
• Sneakers
• Tennis Equipment
• Athletic Shoes
• Racquetball Shoes

 Now, don’t be surprised if these types of search terms receive clicks for your tennis shoes broad match ad group. I don’t just mean 1 or 2 instances. It could be a significant percentage of your total clicks. The likelihood of these search terms converting at the same rate as tennis shoes is remote.  

What can you do to prevent this from occurring?

 1.     Live and breathe the Search Query Report (this is a newer report, it was released mid-year). Have it emailed to you daily. Open it daily and add negative matches often.

 2.     Consider moving your broad match terms to phrase match. Phrase match does not “expand” the match as aggressively but allows your ad to be displayed for tail terms, e.g.  ”white tennis shoes for sale.”  

You have been empowered – Now use it! 

You have two good examples of how Yahoo and Google are empowering the user. Those who don’t take advantage of the empowerment may be realizing a much lower ROI. If you want to win, embrace these tools and techniques because most of your competitors are asleep at the wheel when it comes to this type of optimization.