expertSEM

This morning while optimizing a search campaign on Yahoo based on this weekend’s results, I ran into something extremely common in the SEM industry, the misleading graph. It happens all the time, a graph view is default set to a time period or volume interval that essentially presents the data in a way that doesn’t visually reflect what is actually going on.

The graph I was looking at was rather innocuous, but annoying nonetheless, the first view I saw was impressions, and looking at my two day view, it got my attention. From one day to the next, there appeared to be a twenty degree upward slope. Now, on a standard graph, you would expect that kind of slope to correlate to a rather noticeable increase. However, once I took another sip of coffee and glanced at the interval, I noticed it had been foreshortened to start at 1,925 impressions, and rose to just over 2,000 impressions, about a 3.5% increase in impressions. Once I flipped over to the “Clicks” view, any cause for worry was dispelled, clicks did not change at all Saturday to Sunday.

The problem is the interval setting which Yahoo is using, more specifically, it’s defined by their system without any input from the user, so you never know what the system will give you. To illustrate, I’ve created two graphs off of the same data in Excel, only changing the interval range.

Note that one graph looks like there is a large amount of variation, the other indicates a very small variation. If we are talking about a value like impressions, where the numbers are large, the second graph would be a more accurate visual representation. Conversely, if we are looking at something like clicks or conversions with small numbers, a graph with the sensitivity of the former would be most accurate.

Call me a stickler for accuracy, but I’m much more in favor of allowing users to override a default setting in order to make the tools work better. Take note, Carl Icahn, if you want to improve the value of Yahoo, help the people who help make this company a success… and let me know if you ever want an exhaustive list of things your search marketing engineers need to fix, I’ll be happy to oblige.