Within Panama each ad description is allotted one headline, two ad texts, a display URL, and a destination URL. Users have the option of using a short ad text and a long ad text. The short description can be up 70 characters in length and the long description can be up to 180 characters in length.

The short text appears within Yahoo! search results. The long text appears within Yahoo! partner sites, via Yahoo!’s content distribution network, that can accommodate longer ad text descriptions. The content distribution network includes sites such as CNN, ESPN, USA Today, AllTheWeb, eBay, National Geographic, iVilliage, and many others. We suggest utilizing both the long and short description options. However, this suggestion will soon become a requirement – not by us, but by Yahoo!.

Yahoo! announced yesterday that short ad texts will be required come May. So, for those of you who are only utilizing the long ad text option should go and begin evolving, or become extinct. Maybe it’s not that dramatic, but you know what I mean.

There are different ways to select which websites you want your ads to be placed on. You can browse different categories, describe the topics to google and they’ll find them for you. Manually list specific URL’s or select your demographic and google will list the most relevant websites according to your specified demographic.

I’ve tried to describe my topic and manually enter URL’s that I think would be relevant to my ads, but so far all I’ve seen is a lot of impressions, with no clicks. I did however stumble upon a local television station that sponsored Google ads. Local tv or radio station websites although not very targeted, do get a lot of local traffic. This is especially good if you’re advertising for a local company.

But again, so far I’ve received many impressions, but no clicks. Has anyone out there set up a successful site-targeted campaign?

As part of the roll out of the Panama interface, Yahoo! included the option for advertisers to take existing campaigns (namely Google Ad Words campaigns) and push them in – no questions asked. At the onset, this sounded like a great idea, especially for those wayward search marketers who had all but given up on Yahoo!.

As if it’s any surprise, Google hasn’t taken lightly to this. In my mind, Google’s first move (while it wasn’t directly connected) was the mandatory switch to Ad Words Editor. This changed the mindset of advertisers away from bulk spreadsheets and into the ‘ease of use’ allowed with a desktop program. In recent weeks there have been numerous mentions of Google’s “real” retaliation. By what means you ask? According to one blog post, the “Revenge of the Ad Words Editor” is how your account is translated into a downloadable .csv spreadsheet. Column headers have been added or moved – and supposedly, Yahoo!’s people are scrambling trying to keep up!

This kind of behavior is by no means new. However, I find it quite interesting (educational?) to be in the middle of this “battle of the titans.” My thanks to the Search Marketing Gurus for instilling in me the association of Google=Darth Vader. May the farce be with you.

Has anyone else noticed quirky problems in trying to import a Google bulk spreadsheet into Yahoo!’s new Panama interface? And if Google is Darth Vader, what does that make Yahoo?

A good post on things that seem to matter in PPC but don’t. Examples are average CTR, top spot, and # of keywords. They talk about competitors – not needing to see their bids or their keywords but don’t give a good or thorough explanation of why.

There’s a great blog on search engine guide about MSN turning off advanced query syntax in the search engine such as link:, linkdomain:, and inurl: that was causing “mass automated usage for data mining.”

Posted on Google’s blog, they are aware they’re not medical experts when it comes to health related searches. They’ve hired ‘medical experts’ to help find which health related ads are valid.

New Search Marketing Benchmark Guide 2005-2006 that top rank talks about. It’s great to be able to compare your accounts with the industry standard.

The flurry of chatter surrounding the announcement of Google’s Pay-Per-Action beta test must’ve gotten the Ad Word’s team a ton of email questions. So much so that they had to make a secondary post in their blog to make a broad-spectrum response!

While there have been other studies that have shown how ranking high organically and through paid search marketing can improve overall campaign performance, iCrossing has taken this research to the next level.

Of course you don’t want to over-do your negative keyword list; therefore it is important to do a little negative keyword research first. In Google, under the keyword tool, you can enter keywords for your ad group that are relevant, and if you click on the drop down, ‘possible negative keywords’, then run your search, it will bring up possible negative keywords for your keyword search.

Here is an example: If you’re an e-commerce site selling only women’s shoes, and someone types in kids shoes or men’s shoes, you want to make sure that one of your ads are not triggered by these keywords. So you would add ‘kids’ and ‘mens’ to your negative keyword list.

Also, there is a pool of general negative keywords that would be applicable for most campaigns. Here is a short list to consider:

free
discount
cheap
reviews
history
definition

We have found that users who are searching for ‘free’ or ‘cheap’ tend not to be the highest converting traffic.

How to Add Negative Keywords to your Campaigns:

In Google it’s really easy. Click on the campaign you want to add negative keywords to. Under the tools link click on the link that says, edit campaign negative keywords. At this point you can then simply add your negative keywords into the box that says enter words manually, and then click ‘add keywords’.

The Yahoo keyword tool works differently from Google’s. They do not necessarily have a negative keyword generator, but they have alternatives to this.

When building your keyword list you can insert a small sample list within the ‘find keywords’ field, you can then use the field of ‘Specify words that must not appear in any of the keywords’ and your negative keywords will not appear in your keyword list. For example, you could type in “used books” within the ‘find keywords’ field and then you can type in ‘rare’, ‘audio’ and ‘technical’ and these words will be excluded from your list.

Also, you can do the opposite with your keyword research: you can use the field of “Specify words that must appear in each keyword.” When you choose this option your keyword list will contain keyword variation with only your required phrase. For example, within the ‘find keyword’ field you can type in “publisher” “book publisher” “literary publisher” and within the “Specify words that must appear in each keyword” field you type children, here is your keyword list:

child book publishing
child book publisher
publish child book
child book
child publisher
child book publishing company
self publishing child book
story for child
child book printing
self publish child book
child picture book publisher
the child
publisher of child story
child author
child picture book
gift for child
child story book
child storybook
christian child book publisher
how to write and publish child book
how to get a child book published
child literature publisher
child publishing

Within Yahoo’s interface

If you know the list of negative keywords and you want to insert them directly into your ad group, you can just go into your tactic settings at the ad group level and you can set your “excluded keywords” on the right side of the page.

Friday, March 30^th from 8 pm Pacific Time to 2 am Pacific Time

Saturday, March 31^st from 3 pm Pacific Time to 9 pm Pacific Time

Rest assured that come Monday morning, I’ll be perusing my Yahoo! PPC accounts for any cool new changes.

“…the combination of “extended match” and quality-score based auctions means they [Google] can pretty much serve any ad you have on any search related to your category. The result? Higher cpcs, less traffic because of the less targeted copy, and lower conversion rates because the landing pages are wrong: a perfect storm for advertisers, degraded results for users, but more short-term revenue for Google.”

The great minds at SEM 2.0 took this idea and brought their own opinions to the table. The most prevalent complaint was how broad matching causes certain ads to be displayed for a competitor’s brand keywords. Even though these advertisers aren’t bidding on the branded keywords, broad match will associate and display the ads – entering advertisers into unwanted trademark disagreements. In response to this activity, the general consensus was to add these branded terms as campaign negatives in AdWords.

This is by no means a new debate. In a post from March, 2006, SE Roundtable commented on this issue and came to the same conclusion on how to protect yourself from expanded broad match:

“(1) You extract your log files (2) Pull out the adwords keyword details (3) Remove duplicates (4) Review bad keywords (5) Place bad keywords into negative keyword list (be careful with this) (6) Rinse and Repeat”

Personally, I haven’t run into any major issues in regards to Google’s broad matching technology. However, I consistently see the higher performance (i.e. increased CTR and CPA) of exact matched keywords that are tied to highly relevant ad texts and landing pages. These ongoing discussions merely prove that in order to effectively use broad match, one must do their research and not just “set it and forget it.”

One possible solution to this problem is to move an entire ad group if it makes sense to relocate it to a new campaign. However, this isn’t always the smartest option, nor is it recommended. In a recent webinar hosted by Yahoo!, the topic of choice was Panama’s bulk upload (Import) feature. We took the opportunity to ask as many questions as we could, considering there were four Yahoo! personnel present for Q&A. Finally, after months of toiling with bulk spreadsheet options and dead-end answers from Yahoo!’s support staff, we were presented with a solution for moving keywords.

Here are the specific directions for moving a keyword using the bulk upload (Import) feature.

1. While working with your bulk spreadsheet, decide which keywords need to be moved.
2. COPY the original row of the keyword you would like to move.
3. PASTE this keyword row into its “new” ad group home within the spreadsheet.
4. For this keyword row, change the AD GROUP ID column to reflect this new ad group. If this keyword is being placed into an altogether different campaign, change the CAMPAIGN ID column to reflect this new campaign.
5. ***VERY IMPORTANT STEP*** Delete the KEYWORD ID and CHECKSUM column information for this moved keyword.
6. Return to the original keyword row (from step 2) and mark the COMPONENT STATUS column as Deleted.
7. Save your file as a Unicode text type with a .csv file extension.
8. Import your bulk file into Yahoo! Panama.

There are a few pieces of information to note in this process. The first is that by moving a keyword in this fashion, you will lose all historical data associated with that keyword. You are in a sense deleting the keyword and inserting it into another ad group, as if it were a new keyword. Second, the advantage here is that it is now possible to do this through the bulk upload (Import) feature, thus saving advertisers the time and trouble of navigating through their Panama accounts and deleting and reinserting each individual keyword.

What Makes Us Search Online To Buy Offline?
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070326-231231

Microsoft Search Share Troubles
http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/070326-095436

New WordPress Plug-In, Recommend It
http://www.bluehatseo.com/recommend-it

66 Ways to Link Build in 2007
http://www.brandon-hopkins.com/66-ways-to-build-links-in-2007

Search Engine Smackdown
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/searchenginesmackdown

Challenge to Jason Calacanis
http://www.pronetadvertising.com/articles/open-challenge-to-jason-calacanis.html

Top 10 favorites for AdWords Editor
http://adwords.blogspot.com/2007/03/adwords-editors-top-10-favorites.html

Keyword grouper
http://www.google.com/support/adwordseditor/bin/answer.py?answer=47661

Yahoo click quality czar
http://searchengineland.com/070322-083634.php

Yahoo: 92% of Conversions Happen Offline http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2007/03/yahoo-92-of-conversions-happen-offline.html

Google is testing a “Search PPC” option over the right hand sponsored listings in the SERPs.
http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/google/google-testing-search-product-options/

Part one of a series of tips on performing PPC audits, for agencies or in-house SEMs.
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2007/03/26/search-tip-ppc-order-audit

PPC Results: Break Out by Brand And Non-brand Keywords
http://searchengineland.com/070327-081415.php

Travelocity CMO Explains Approach to Paid Search Campaigns
http://adage.com/digital/article.php?article_id=115726

Keyword Research: Advice on Methods And Tools
http://www.10e20.com/2007/03/22/the-most-overlooked-affordable-keyword-research-method/