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Archive for the ‘Yahoo! Search Marketing’ Category

If you are looking for helpful, insightful tips and strategies for your Yahoo! paid search campaign, PPC Hero is here to help. As you can see, we discuss Yahoo! PPC frequently. We are always publishing new, updated articles with tips, advice and strategies to make your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaign a success!

New Yahoo Search Query Expand Report – Not Quite Up To Par With Google

May 13th, 2009 | Amber | Reporting / Conversion Tracking, Yahoo! Search Marketing

I received a phone call from my Yahoo rep saying that they are offering a search query report for our clients.  I was very excited about this since I love the search query report from Google.

Unfortunately, I was soon disappointed after hearing that I couldn’t run the search query report out of the Yahoo PPC interface myself. Here’s how it works:

If you want a search query report run in Yahoo, a Yahoo technical person has to run the report for you. Then they review the report for you, and if they find any additional keywords that you could be …

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I Personally Feel Yahoo! Is Giving Advertisers Bad Advice

April 29th, 2009 | Amber | Yahoo! Search Marketing

In the latest Yahoo! Search Marketing blog, Kastle Waserman, the Communications Manager in Advertiser Solutions, I feel is giving advertisers some not so great advice when it comes to managing your PPC campaigns.

The blog is titled, “You’re Doing it Wrong”, 5 common mistakes that can hurt your ads’ performance.

Most of the blog post is great. Points 1 through 3 are definitely best practices used among many good PPC advertisers. However, it’s points 4 and 5 that I’m having problems with.

Mistake #4 – Yahoo claims that you should never put your business phone number in your ads. I see …

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Your Yahoo Stats Weren’t That Bad This Weekend: Yahoo’s Reporting is Broken

April 13th, 2009 | Joe | Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo’s reporting isn’t necessarily broken but the majority of accounts are seeing significant reporting delays that stem back as far as Thursday afternoon. On Friday, we thought it might just be a fluke but when we got in to the office this morning, all of our Yahoo stats were down significantly. And this is due to the fact that none of our accounts have logged any conversion data since Thursday (4/10).

I spoke with my customer representative at Yahoo. He said that the reporting delay is being worked on by their engineers. However, he did not have an ETA on when …

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Yahoo! Thinks My PPC Accounts Suck

March 9th, 2009 | John | Yahoo! Search Marketing

I got a good chuckle today. In 5 minutes time, I received two emails for two different accounts from Yahoo! Search Marketing this morning. The first one told me that my bids were too low, and the other reported that my ads are too low of quality. Wh-what? Yahoo! must think my PPC accounts suck!
Email 1: Your Bids are Lower on Average than Most of Your Competitors

Email 2: Low Ad Quality may be Causing You to Pay More
I’ll never admit to being perfect, but the two accounts in question are two of my strongest Yahoo! accounts. …

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New Features Rolling Out For Yahoo! Search Marketing, FINALLY!

March 4th, 2009 | Amber | Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! is finally catching up with Google and MSN and has some new features rolling out mid-March. Here’s what they are:

1.       Day Parting:  Yahoo! has officially opened up their targeting preferences to certain times of the day.  This is the exact same concept of Google’s ad scheduling.  You can go in at the campaign level and select certain hours of the day that you would like to increase your bids.  If you find that people convert more frequently during the lunch hour 12pm – 1pm, then you can increase your bids by 10%, 20%, etc. to get more traffic …

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And Yet Another Wave of Yahoo! ‘Minimum Bid Requirements’ and Keyword Updates

February 25th, 2009 | John | Bid/Budget Management, Yahoo! Search Marketing

This will admittedly be a short post.  But I find it incredibly odd how Yahoo! has programmed their minimum bid system.  In lieu of dynamically updating accounts that need attention on an as-needed basis – instead, Yahoo! rolls out massive updates to everyone at once.

For a bit of perspective, with Google, your Quality Score and first-page bidding system is a living breathing thing.  When a keyword drops below a certain threshold, your Quality Score drops, and so does your “estimated bid to reach the first …

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Has Yahoo Optimized Your Account Without Your Consent? You Better Check!

February 24th, 2009 | Joe | Yahoo! Search Marketing

Last summer, we wrote about Yahoo’s ad profiling program. This is a quick reminder that you need to be vigilant when monitoring for changes that Yahoo makes to your PPC campaign without your knowledge or consent.

What is Ad Profiling? Yahoo will go into your account to pause “poorly-performing” keywords (keywords with a low click-through rate) and pause “poorly-performing” ad texts.

Also, lets review the core intention of Ad Profiling, as stated by Yahoo: Our primary goal is to preserve the keyword by improving its performance. Just as in a garden you might try using more or less water or adding …

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Yahoo Shuts Down Their Content Network in Europe

January 14th, 2009 | Joe | Yahoo! Search Marketing

Today we received an announcement from Yahoo UK that they will be discontinuing their Content Match product in Europe. If you are running ads within a European-targeted Yahoo account, your campaigns will be effected.

Just for clarity sakes, I will sample directly from the Yahoo notification:

“As a valued client we are writing to give you advance notice of the closure of our Content Match product in Europe.

The decision to close Content Match underlines our commitment to focus on our Sponsored Search and Display business and to simplify our solutions to deliver a high ROI for our advertisers.

Content Match …

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What Did Yahoo Search Marketing Change in Their Updated Terms and Conditions?

January 6th, 2009 | Joe | Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yesterday, Yahoo Search Marketing sent out modified advertiser Terms and Conditions. We have previously discovered some surprising information when Yahoo updated their agreements, so I wanted to find out exactly what had changed.

This time around, Yahoo hasn’t made significant changes that will directly effect your search marketing campaign. Most of the changes in the new version of the Terms and Conditions are related to the dissolution of Overture Services, Inc., which Yahoo! acquired in 2003. Also, section 12 of the agreement was slightly revised due to a change …

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Yahoo Shortens Data Retention Period to 3 Months

December 19th, 2008 | Joe | Yahoo! Search Marketing

On Wednesday Yahoo announced a new global data retention policy. Yahoo will limit its data storage period to 90 days, which is a sizable decrease from their previous 13 month policy. Yahoo is expanding this policy to apply not only to search-log data but also page views, page clicks, ad views, and ad clicks.

The European Union has expressed concerns on multiple occasions over the use of data collected by search engines, and the potential for this data to be used illegally. Yahoo has listened to this criticism and they are taking action. “In our world of customized online …

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