Are you an advertiser with Yahoo Search? If yes this news will benefit you. HOW?

First the news.

In June 2008 Google and Yahoo announced an Ad showing deal where Yahoo was to show ads of Google Advertisers in their search and partner results.

However it wasn’t a smooth ride as some advertisers and government regulators raised concerns about the deal. Here are some threads of webmasterworld that clearly shows webmasters were concerned over the deal:

Yahoo and Google announce advertising deal

Microsoft Wages War Against Google-Yahoo Ad Deal in Washington

Google Yahoo Ad Deal In Doubt Over Potential Antitrust Restriction

Apparently it seems there were too many road blocks that Google ultimately called it off.

Google in its blog says:

Quote:

However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was disappointed Google didn’t fight harder for search deal.

It’s easy to understand why Google wasn’t interested in the deal but Yahoo was. It would have given Yahoo more dollars in terms of Ad revenues simply because for many searches – especially the long ones – Yahoo just doesn’t have enough inventories to fill ads. (The deal was supposed to bring Yahoo $250 million to $450 million in additional operating cash flow in the first year. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/technology/companies/07google.html)

Yahoo has a lot of advertisers in the news, sports, and finance and entertainment categories, but for others it really needs a lot of inventory to fill ads.

The deal was a boon to Yahoo, but not for Google. Secondly because of the concerns it was generating in the advertisers community it was better for Google to call it off – so it backed out.

Now Yahoo advertisers will stand to gain because of this. Why?

First, Yahoo will feel a bit insecure and that would be reason enough to make Yahoo work harder and try to be a better search engine. A proof is the letter Yahoo sent to its advertisers once the deal was over.

Quote:

In short, even in the absence of a commercial agreement with Google, we intend to become an ever-stronger player in online advertising. Our certainty on this front comes from the progress we continue to make in many areas, not the least of which are the significant innovations we’re making in search. We continually optimize our algorithmic and sponsored search. In fact, in 2008 alone, we have developed and launched hundreds of improvements to our search engine, including index expansions and updates, ranking models and performance tuning. Each of these features is designed to improve search quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to our users.

Secondly, due to more advertisers the competition would have increased leading to an increase in keyword bids. It is a well known fact that those who cannot afford Google turn to Yahoo for online advertisements.

An increase in bid prices would have been a setback to small advertisers.

Thirdly, since Google advertisers pay more per click, it needs no rocket science to assume that Yahoo would have shown Google Ads first before showing their own ads pushing the Yahoo only advertiser’s ads to well below their current position resulting in lower clicks. Poor Yahoo advertisers would have then paid more for less clicks.

These are the reasons I think Yahoo advertisers stand to benefit because of this no-deal.

Though I feel Google advertisers, especially those who do not advertise in Yahoo, would have benefited from this deal. Unlike Yahoo advertisers they would have paid the same for more clicks and would have had an opportunity to know how their campaigns were faring in Yahoo if they had analytics in place.

For some strange reason, even Google advertisers were not happy with this deal as is mentioned in the Google blog. I think the reason why they were against it is that most were already advertising in Yahoo and felt no reason to advertise the same ads in Yahoo through Google and essentially pay more per click. (It’s a well know fact that advertisers are willing to pay more per click in Google than in Yahoo.)

Are you happy that this deal is now over?

Google has improved its Adwords quality score algorithms. Now there won’t be any inactive keywords. However Google will show a message telling advertisers what bid is required to reach the first page of the results.

This may not necessarily be good news. Though the keywords will now be active, the low quality keywords will still not get enough impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

Google will still calculate quality score. According to Google’s official post, these three major improvements will take place:

1. Quality Score will be calculated at the time of each search query,

2. Keywords will no longer be marked ‘inactive for search’. All keywords will be active and will be evaluated for every relevant query, and

3. “First page bid estimates” will replace “minimum bids”.

It means the problem for small advertisers still remains. How do you get more impressions for the keywords that were previously inactive, but are now active?

Here are some steps that you can take to get the best out of your Google Adwords advertising campaigns:

1. The suggested bid is for the first page. You may not afford this, but see if you can afford to be in the second page. To do this you may need to increase the bids to a point where you feel it should show up at least in the second page.

2. Since all keywords will be active, why not increase the keywords for the campaigns. Research some long tail keywords. Add these long tail keywords in your campaigns.

3. Try to increase the CTR (click through rate) of the ads. This way you will pay less per click and will be able to afford to raise the bids for the most important keywords to be in the first page.

4. Open your ads to target content network of Google. Since all keywords are active, this will help your ads get more exposure on millions of websites that have partnered with Google to display ads. This is popularly known as Adsense. Don’t worry, the click through rate in content network will not effect the quality score of the search network ads.

5. Though landing page quality is evaluated less frequently, it is advisable to improve the landing page quality. Better landing page quality will increase the quality score resulting in more impression for the ads.

It can be achieved through the following:

a) Add relevant and original content

b) Add your business address and contact number

c) Have a good and honest privacy policy in place

d) Provide an easy path for a user to purchase or receive the product or offer in your ad

For more information read – Google Landing Page and Site Quality Guidelines.

I hope these ideas will help you benefit form the latest improvements of Google Adwords Quality Score and get more traffic for your site for less.

Your views are important for growth of this blog. Please leave a comment and let me know what you would like to read in this blog.

Related Topics:
 
1. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
2. Why Google AdWords is a Must for Online Advertising
3. Keyword Bidding and Management – How much to bid?

Google had a unique way of calculating quality score keywords. Adwords would NOT display an ad against a keyword if it thought the quality of the keyword was not up to the quality standards of Google results.

In that case the keyword would be marked “Inactive for Search”. However this is changing and in the next few days there won’t be any inactive keywords. Read – Google Adwords quality score improvements.

Once the quality score improvements go live, many keywords will show the advertisers how much they need to bid to get to the first page results.

They will get a message like this for most keywords:

”Active – Bid is below first page bid estimate of $**”

It is up to the advertisers to increase the bids.

So what happens to the inactive keywords?

Though the message will not show, the inactive bids will still get only few impressions or none, because in any case the quality score will be calculated on-the-fly.

The quality score will decide the best keywords/ads to be shown and therefore the inactive bids may not get huge impressions as assumed by many advertisers.

However there are ways to get the maximum impressions out of your Goggle Adwords advertising campaigns.

Many advertisers I know and have read in forums do not use the Google AdWords content network to advertise their site. The reason they say is poor quality of traffic. Well no more.

Google has recently improved its content network. Read more about this in their blog.

I will not dwell into what improvements were made by Google as you can read in the blog, what I will write here is how to get the best out of Google AdWords content network targeting.

1. Distribution of Keywords is important: The Keywords are very important as all the keywords in an AdGroup will form a theme and all those websites that “fit” into that theme will be eligible to display your Ad.

How to tackle this?

Paste your keywords in a spreadsheet. Let’s name it Sheet1. In another sheet (Sheet2) let the first row of every column represent the name of the product. Go back to Sheet1. Copy the first keyword, go to Sheet2 and paste it in the appropriate column representing the product. Do the same for the second keyword. Repeat this until you have pasted all the keywords from Sheet1 to Sheet2.

I can understand this is a cumbersome work, but it will surly pay dividends in the long run.

By doing this what you have done is distributed the keywords to represent different products. This will help Google to show your ad in only those websites that sell similar product and no other website.

Needless to say, these different columns should represent different AdGroups in your Adwords Campaign.

Why this is important? Lets suppose you sell blue and black widgets. Since you have separated your adgroups representing blue and black, the blue widget ad will not show in a site selling black widget and vice versa.

This way you will get highly targeted visitors.

2. Let content targeting be content targeting: Let the content network targeting campaign target the Google content network only. Its advisable that you opt out of the search network when you are targeting content network.

Why? Because a different mindset of people will be looking at your ads. These are the people who are not searching for your product but looking for more information on your or similar product.

3. Try a different landing page: See point 2 above. Since visitors coming from the content network are looking for more information, its better to first provide them the information of your product. Its common sense that this page has to be optimized differently than the page where visitors are coming from the search network.

4. Track everything: It’s important to track traffic coming from the content network. (Infact it’s important to track all visitors coming from whatever sources.)

Tracking will help you to study the behavior of your content ad visitors and implement changes accordingly.

5. No dynamic insertion of keywords in ads: Since ad shown is not keyword specific but theme specific, it is of no use if you create an ad with dynamic insertion of keywords.

Google will show default text of the ad in the content network if dynamic insertion has been used.

6. Test your ads: Don’t just sleep over your ads. Though the CTR of the Google content network does not effect quality score of the search network ads, its important that you keep testing your ads to get the best possible CTR for your content network ads as well.

7. Negative keywords: Just like the search network its important that you use negative keywords smartly. You don’t want people looking for free stuff see your ads. Do you?

Remember that content targeting also helps in brand building. So sometimes it makes sense to keep advertising in the content network especially if you want to build a brand. It will help in the long run.

Help me improve this blog. Please leave a comment.

Related topics:

1. Landing Page Optimization
2. Free Tips for Writing Good PPC Ads
3. Why Google AdWords