Yahoo Search Marketing Problems

OK we prepared for a roller coaster ride on this one, sorry, but this is a big whinge!

Background:
I have been managing Pay-per-Click Accounts for nearly 5 years now, Google with their massive market share (70% UK and 60% US) have always provided an excellent service for pay-per-click through Google Adwords, further rewarded through their Google Adsense, i.e. there is something about their philosophy that makes sense, their ‘you give, we give back’ approach just works. Couple in easy, quick and intuitive and you get a great service that makes you feel your getting your bucks worth.

Now Yahoo Search Marketing, formerly Overture (yes I have been around a while). Having been limping along in 2nd place (25% UK and 35% US approx) trying their hardest to compete with Google.

The answer was fairly obvious make the website FASTER!, The biggest complaint anyone ever had against Overture was the speed. Looking a little deeper I used to spend 1-2 hours weeks managing my Google Adwords account, and 4-6 hours on Overture, yet I was spending a quarter of my available budget on Overture, resulting in quite frankly much more work for much less reward. But the market share was just about there.

Yahoo took over Overture and we hoped for an improvement, it never came, in fact Yahoo just about managed to hold the system together and maintain market share, more in the US than Europe.

Upgrade:
It had to happen it took 3 years in the making and Yahoo have now revamped their entire system much more in line with Google Adwords. But hang it, it is just not nearly as good. I genuinely feared that the service would be worse and it really is.

There is no noticeably increase in the website speed. How does Google Adwords do it. Timing a few pages and I am looking anywhere between 20-40 seconds for a page to load. Worse if I make a mistake and click the wrong link, I have to wait for that page to load (thanks to AJAX) before I can go back… I am using Firefox so nothing complicated.

So issue 1 speed – completely unresolved.

Upgrading – it had to happen I know and I appreciate it really I do, but I was organised as per the recommendations beforehand, that did not stop everything being out of sync by 1 level. i.e. my old categories became campaigns instead of Adgroups, my keywords became Adgroups instead of keywords and my adverts became keywords instead of staying as adverts. I thought little of this until I tried to sort it out. Whooooaaaaa!, no way, this was going to take hours… I mean probably 4 hours per account at the least. no way!

The biggest problem was navigation, all this editing in different places, up a level down a level, up to campaign, down to keyword, I didn’t even dare look at the adverts… no way!

Thankfully an email to customer support lead to a decent response, okay I put a veiled threat that I would close down my 15 odd accounts with yahoo and I am sure that helped. We got stuck into the basics of what needed to be done. But 1 month later only 4 out of 15 account have been vaguely sorted out.

So Issue 2 – upgrading – partially sorted.

Next, the god send, wow I can import spreadsheets, this should make things easier… I went to old reliable Google, exported an account and we off, or not!

No, I exported the Google Adwords Account fine, but there it ended, I eventually managed to get the file into the right format to allow the new Yahoo system to ‘convert’ my file, but then Yahoo supplied me with a list of ‘errors’ that still needed sorting out… Okay so Negative Keywords had to be removed… and then I managed to get a converted spreadsheet to work…

Now I ha to download it… not quite sure why as next I have to upload it again, I suppose this extra step should have warned me about what was going to happen. Wrong format, chop, change, re save, UNICODE (TXT) format, but saved as a CSV for some reason, Excel was very patience with me and allowed me to do all this funny stuff. Finally my import was made to work.

Now the nightmare started and I am not joking… I imported some 24 Adgroups and 1400 keywords, but hey ho, most where rejected… after passing all those tests, after spending all that time trying to get the file in the right format laid out in the way had to be as specified by Yahoo, suddenly adverts were too long (70 characters max. try measuring that in Excel) keywords were duplicated all over the place and the whole thing is about as user friendly as a custard pie thrown in my face (the joke is on me).

Now I have a bunch of half loaded Adgroups, with some adverts (no ideas which ones) rejected, keywords rejected, everything in a pending status. Where do I start sorting this lot out… looking at the error log, over 600 items with error status. I cannot just download the correct ones again…

That means it is back to navigation, up a level, down a level, up to Adgroup level down to Keyword Level. Not again!

So Issue 3 Importing – No fear – Don’t do it

I have to stick with what I have experienced, or else this Post will really constitute a book so:

Confidence in Google – 80% I am getting Bang for my Buck, confidence in Yahoo – 3% and still diving, I gave it 3% because there is still one contact at Yahoo Search Marketing who seems to be on the case.

But lets examine the confidence factor a second, I never gave it much thought before. Previously on Yahoo Search Marketing, you knew where you were, the competition were paying 20pence and you were paying 19pence, and ranked below, auction great stuff. I want to get to 1st place I’d just have to pay 1penny more than the nearest competition. Now that is all impossible.

The system is based on a quality score, okay I am used to that from Google Adwords, but somehow Google just do it and do it well. With Yahoo how am I supposed to know what I am paying. Google have a Keyword forecaster, I have to say their latest version is not great, but it gives an indication of what might be spent on that Keyword, Yahoo, sorry a slide bar? are you kidding, what kind of faith am I supposed to put into that, it is just a gimmick? There is no basis for this to be in anyway accurate.

And this is the problem the closer I look at the Yahoo system the more complex, complicated and intricate the system becomes, every new feature is loaded with complexity. Sorry I am LOST. I have no idea what I am spending, every time I click back my browser has a heart attack, I cannot edit keywords together in one place. Everything is click here to do this, click here to do that without ever actually being able to do anything. I daren’t.

Issue 4 confidence – 3% and going down.

Current Situation
All Yahoo Advertising is on hold. Customers wanting me to manage their Yahoo Advertising are going to be disappointed, currently it isn’t going to happen. The system has real benefit, there is also that blasted market share 30% is not something I want to miss out on… but no it ain’t going to happen at the moment.

Finally Note:
I have searched high an try for like minded souls, am I the only one, can anyone else sympathise with me on this, or am I barking up the wrong tree.