Is Yahoo!’s Search PPC Really from Search Engines?
I think there is a general sense of Yahoo! distain in the InsureMe paid search department, and I have a feeling that we aren’t the only ones feeling a bit frustrated by big Y!. You see, after having to deal with the super fun (if your idea of fun is going to the dentist for a root canal) Panama update, our paid search team is still getting daily emails from Yahoo! telling them that a couple of our keywords are no longer acceptable. It’s not so much the fact that keywords are being dropped – it is more the idea of getting multiple emails on a daily basis telling us five of our tens of thousands of keywords are being removed. I mean, send a bulk email after you round up fifty words or something – anything less is just annoying.
But hey, we put up with these things because Yahoo has traffic…and traffic means money.
This is true, but after reading Apogee Weblog’s post, entitled Yahoo! has Nasty Sausage Ingredients, I think my disappointment in Yahoo! has reached a new level.
You see, Richard from Apogee did a little research into some of his client’s clicks that came from Yahoo! Search Marketing’s search PPC ads (not content match). The results were pretty scary. You see, he found between 9% to 46% of the traffic from Y!SM search was actually coming from parked domains. That’s right, parked domains – not exactly what I would consider “search” traffic. Here is the breakdown for his four clients:
Client A:
67% Yahoo! properties
9% parked domains
Client B:
60% Yahoo! properties
14% parked domains
Client C:
57% Yahoo! properties
31% parked domains
Client D:
41% Yahoo! properties
46% parked domains
Amazing, eh? I’m not really sure why Yahoo! would do this, except for the fact that they make more money by lumping garbage into the search category rather than content. The sad thing is, Yahoo! is already having enough trouble with their image in the search marketing community…and with all the time and money spent on Panama, you would think they would want to improve click quality for their advertisers. Doing so, and doing so publicly, would really help them stand out and build trust with advertisers. Beating Google isn’t going to happen by putting out a new ad platform like Panama, but providing advertisers with better-than-Google click quality would. Seems like short term greed has gotten in the way of long term success at Yahoo! once again.
To be fair, I am sure that Google is doing the same thing to advertisers…and we all know that contextual advertising on both platforms should be handled with great caution. But wouldn’t it be grand if we, as advertisers (and the reason these companies actually have money), could feel confident in the fact that “search” traffic is actually coming from search engines and “content” traffic is everything else? I don’t just think that would be grand, I think it is the right thing for the search engines to do.
Your thoughts?
[Quick Note: If the sausage reference threw you off, it has to do with the Sausage Manifesto – learn more about that here.]
[Also, thanks to the Cartoon Barry blog for pointing out this article.]
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