expertSEM

Over the past two months, we have been working with Yahoo! on a problem we first observed in July with one of our accounts. The matching methodology, “Advanced Match” in Yahoo!’s parlance, was not delivering traffic as we understood the system to work. We now have confirmation that Yahoo! has been breaking their own guidelines with regard to delivering traffic.

Let’s start with how Yahoo! describes their matching system:

Pretty clear, right? All the things that we SEM folks have come to know and understand. (For more irony read Yahoo!’s own advice for their matching system here).  One thing worth mentioning, all new accounts, campaigns and adgroups launch on advanced match by default, which also happens to increase Yahoo!’s bottom line substantially.

Now let me direct your attention to exhibit 2: highlights from a recent phrase match report I analyzed for a client when our results started decreasing:

My initial reaction to this report: AAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!

A more considered response: while it is true that all trade schools are schools, not all schools are trade schools. As my firm is only interested in advertising to individuals looking for specifically “trade schools,” as our keyword selection attests, we object to Yahoo! displaying our very specific ad to anyone who happens to query “school.” It is a waste of our money, and this practice does not conform to Yahoo!’s own explanation of how their system works.

According to their help section (see Yahoo Advanced Match image above), matching happens in the following forms: exact, singular/plural variations, common misspellings, in a phrase, separated by word[s] or in a different order. So let’s look at Yahoo!’s Search Query Report; taking into account these seven options for advanced match, try to understand how the search query “trade” is relevant to our keyword “trade schools” or how “east LA” is relevant to “east LA college.” You will notice that our full root keyword is nowhere to be found in most of these matches. Not only does this affect advertisers but also results in poor quality for the end user.

The most unethical part to this is the fact that the report required to even diagnose this HUGE issue (Yahoo! Search Query Report) is not freely available in Yahoo!’s interface―clearly free access to this would open up a huge can of worms―and was never brought to our attention by Yahoo! It was only through scrutinizing our client’s results and seeing unexpected declines that we started requesting this report.

Now that I’ve freaked you out (and if you work in SEM, you should be floored by this practice), you will need to do something about it. In the short term, here is what you must do:

• Switch all Yahoo! keywords to standard match. The only time you will not be hit with this atrocious matching issue is if you switch everything to standard match, at least until Yahoo! changes their policy to what they claim to offer. Traffic volume will decrease because your ads will not display for as many keywords, but it will be better quality traffic, thus increasing potential for conversions.

This wouldn’t be good advice without a few provisos, so here are a few:

• If your campaign is performing poorly now, adjust everything to standard match. This will give you some time to follow the next steps and put together your game plan.
• Refine your negative keyword lists. This can be done at an account and adgroup level.
• Review your matching and be specific. Don’t set your whole account to advanced match. Instead, bucket your keywords into adgroups based on what you feel will work better as advanced or standard and change matching accordingly.

1. Note: Standard matching includes plurals and common misspellings
2. Advanced match is where Yahoo! is hitting advertisers with poor matching, so select your keywords wisely

• Yahoo! only allows 250 negatives, not much when we are looking at their poor quality matching, so prioritize your negatives wisely across account and adgroup levels.
• Request a Search Query Report from Yahoo! Use this report to include more specific keywords rather than just relying on advanced match. Yes, there is a possibility that not all of your keywords will be approved; however, it is heavily dependent on how you put them through editorial with the match type.

This is a terrible problem, and these fixes are only half measures. The real solution is to get together as an SEM community and hammer Yahoo! into submission on this issue. They have screwed up immensely, and it is costing all of their advertisers in wasted adspend (to Yahoo!’s benefit, don’t even bother feigning surprise) and costing the end user in poor-quality results. This is unacceptable behavior, and ultimately We the SEMers need to show our displeasure in a variety of ways.