So if you are like me, taking on the new Yahoo search marketing platform was not only challenging, but painful. After talking to all the yahoo’s over at Yahoo for days on end (I think my record was 14 times in one day), I feel as though I can give some advice to those of you going through what I went though; and trust me I feel your pain.

First, when you log into your old Yahoo account (Overture), push the preview button! Don’t even think about upgrading until you have seen what Yahoo will do to your account. I think the hardest part of this preview is seeing how much Yahoo will mess up your account and realizing how much work you have ahead of you.

But I digress. Once you have seen what they are going to do to your account, you can do one of two things; call Yahoo and start yelling (which is fun but not very productive), or download your entire pre-upgraded Yahoo account (so you have a back up in case you mess up).

Now for the super easy way to fix your new and messed up Yahoo account (this is what I recommend if at all possible). If you have a Google Adwords account that parallels your old Overture account, download that entire account using Adword Editor. (To download, just search Google for Adwords Editor. You should be able to find it. If not, call Google–they are very helpful!)

Once you have downloaded your Google Account, you will want to open it up in Excel and make sure that theColumns have the correct headings. (Mine didn’t, and this cost me two days on the phone with the yahoo’s…) But, the headings that you need are supposed to look exactly like this Download file. If you have even a single letter missing, it won’t work… (Don’t you love Yahoo?)

If you are lucky and the spreadsheet that you downloaded has those same headers, then read ahead a bit. But for those of you (like me) whose download didn’t look like this, there are some simple but time consuming things you can do to make yours look and work nice.

Begin by copying and pasting everything you can match up in your Google account spreadsheet to this spreadsheet. Everything should match up. (But remember not to change any of headers!) You should see an extra column (column D) with the header “Report Type” on it. You need to type “Ad Text” or “Keyword” into each row under “Report Type.”

To determine which phrase you need to use in each box, expand your spreadsheet so you can see column I -”Keyword” If the box is empty under column I, type “Ad Text” in the same row’s Column D box. If the box has one of your keywords in it, type “Keyword” in the same row’s Column D box.

Here comes the labor intensive part–you have to do this for each box in Column D. If you accidentally put “Keyword” where there isn’t a keyword in Column I, your account won’t upload correctly. I would suggest you double check this before you try to upload everything into Yahoo. This is an example of how the column should look. Download file

Now for the fun part! It’s time to push that lovely Upgrade button in your Overture account. Once you have done this, you have to wait eight hours for Yahoo to upgrade your account. So go get a good nights’ rest, dream about happy things, and forget about the messy account you will have to deal with in the morning.

After those eight hours, you should be able to go into your newly upgraded Yahoo account and see the mess that you saw with the preview button yesterday…oh joy! I have found it works best to pause all the campaigns that Yahoo has created for you, because you won’t be using those anyways. And move the spreadsheet you made/downloaded the day before into your account to start making you money!

To do this, click the “Campaigns” tab. Just below it you should see the “Import” button. Click that. In the middle of the page you should see a tab that says “Convert Third Party Campaigns”. Click that.

Now you need to save your account in CSV or Zip format. To do this, go into Excel, bring up your spreadsheet, go to “Save As” and save it in “Unicode text.” Name it whatever you want with .CSV at the end. Once you have saved it like this, you should be able to browse for that file name, select it and press convert.

Now cross your fingers, close your eyes, rub your lucky rabbit’s foot, and if the stars are aligned, you should see your download at the bottom!

Download the newly converted file and save. Go back to the “Import Campaigns” tab. Find your newly converted file and upload it. Once you have done this, everything should be ready to go. Another tip: make sure that once you have uploaded everything correctly, you go into each campaign/adgroup and make sure everything looks ok.

Because you used your Google account, if Yahoo didn’t bring something with your upload (let’s say, some keywords didn’t transfer), all you have to do is copy and paste them from your Google account.

If you are still having problems the phone number to Yahoo Search Marketing is 1-866-Yahoo-01 (this is the direct number to the people who messed up your account in the first place, so they try hard to help. But sometimes they just don’t know what they are doing). You will need your account number and the e-mail address you have listed on the account when you talk to these people. They respond better when you are nice to them…I know, they don’t like it when you yell at them…imagine that!

But when you are finished with this headache, Yahoo has really improved the usability of their search marketing product. You don’t have to wait for days on end for things to be approved anymore. The reports come up almost immediately, and our ROI has gone up dramatically because we are able to change things much easier. Now that I don’t have to talk to the yahoo’s ten times a day, I really enjoy working within our account and realize that what they say is true–No Pain, No Gain!

Happy Searching!

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