Overture Update

Yahoo/Oveture Update

The news is not good. As you might remember I complained to Yahoo's Editorial Staff, that multiple mirror URL's were appearing on ALL major keywords. That's right as many as 6 duplicate sites appear on some of my major keywords. After calling and emailing Yahoo for months, a representative finally told me "unofficially" to do the same thing, so much for there Advertiser Agreement and their Editorial Staff. Someone out there must be thinking "Class Action Suit". There Advertising Agreement is binding both ways.

Some major changes have happened now that MSN gone by the wayside, which accounted for 40% of my clicks and a equal amount of page views, my click count has increased. When MSN was in the mix, 50% was from Yahoo, 40% from MSN and 10% other affiliated sites. Now, 94.5% of my clicks come from Yahoo.

As I have written about in the past, I use "Live Person", which let's monitor click fraud and most importantly the keywords used to get to my site, both paid and organic. As I have said in the past, I only accounted 40% of the traffic coming from Yahoo/Overture as authentic and/or a possible real customer. My return per 100 clicks, was 6 applications or sales.

Here is the amazing thing, because of the loss off MSN, my click count should be down by 40% right? But in in fact click count increased by 20%. Here is the negative to the unexplained increase, my sales went from 6 sales per 100 clicks, to 2 sales per 100 clicks.

From monitoring my site, I do know how Yahoo is accomplishing this;

Advanced Search, now should be called, Rubbish Search. They are now displaying ads for non related keyword searches. Here is an example, Advanced Keyword Phrase: "Automobile Financing Medford, Oregon", now as we know from Yahoo, these keywords must be contained within a keyword phrase to pull up an ad. right? They can be in any order, but these keywords must be displayed, so a consumer can type in, "I need Automobile financing in Medford, Oregon". Now, at this time, that same ad will pop up, if the keyword phrase is "Automobile Repair in Medford, Oregon", this is were the bulk of the extra click activity is coming from, ads appearing on unrelated searches.

Advanced Search is now being used to boost page views, but with it, comes the useless clicks. Yahoo is banking on the public's curiosity. Which for some advertisers selling a novelty product, this might be a great thing. For me, it is time to stop using Advanced Search or Overture all together.http://forums.digitalpoint.com/images/icons/icon9.gif
Unhappy


Jack