lightbulbA while back I wrote on how to take an export of your Google Adwords campaigns and use the Yahoo Third Party Converter Tool to bulk upload into Yahoo. While the process itself is fairly simple, a lot of people are still running into problems. In order to be successful at bulk uploading your Google Adwords campaigns into Yahoo, first you must have the import feature in Yahoo before you can use the Convert third party campaigns tool. In order to get the import feature simply call your Yahoo rep and ask for it. Below I have described some tips along with common errors I have run into in the past and how I got around them:

1. Delete negative keywords

a. Because you can add negative keywords within Google in the keywords tab of your ad group, you can’t do this in yahoo. Therefore you must remove all negative keywords from your spreadsheet before uploading them into Yahoo.

2. You cannot edit actual keywords in bulk form then upload into yahoo

a. Yahoo only allows you to delete and add keywords in your spreadsheet. You cannot modify an existing keyword then upload the file.

3. Fill in columns if adding ad text or additional keywords

a. Before submitting your spreadsheet, be sure to copy down all campaign and ad group id columns so Yahoo knows which ad or keyword should be under which campaign and ad group.

4. Be sure start date is listed

a. If you are uploading a brand new spreadsheet into a new yahoo account, be sure to fill in the yahoo start date column before uploading your spreadsheet.

Types of Errors and how to fix them:

If you get this error:

Error: “Can’t determine parent ad group or parent campaign.”

Fix: This means you haven’t copied all column data with your new additions. (See #3 from above)

Error: “Cannot add keyword because it already exists within the campaign.”

Fix: While Google allows you to add singular and plural versions of your keywords separately, Yahoo takes both plural and singular as one. It’s okay, you don’t have to do anything at this point. Yahoo will kick out the duplicate keywords for you.

If there are any other errors you are running into while bulk uploading your Google campaigns into Yahoo, please feel free to let me know and I will research how to get around it!