I work with several clients who are marketing on both Yahoo and Google. This past week we noticed that one of the clients had experienced a big dip in conversions in Yahoo around the last week of September-- they dropped about 40% over a couple of days and never really recovered. We checked some other clients, and it seemed like that was true of them as well; all of them had experienced a fall off in conversions around the same time while impressions and clicks held steady.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I am running 2 very similar PPC campaigns for Adwords and overture. THey are really similar in the sense that I have 1 base "keyword document" and I try to mirror them. The past 3 months my Adwords conversion rates and income has steadily been increasing. My yahoo conversion rate is slowly decreasing... I have called overture about it and they said just add more keywords. I am really getting frustrated. Any luck on your part? What industry do the clients whose conversion rated have dropped belong to?

Yes, I heard finally from them! They said that starting 9/29 they began to have problems with their conversion counter. They didn't have any more information than that. I was really surprised that no one else on this forum had encountered the situation.

Also note that MSN, which used to use Yahoo listings, begain using their own in October. So that should also affect impressions, clicks, and conversions.

well.. did they say what they're doing about it? I should have mentioned by the way that for our site I check our overture conversions in their site but I also track them with our own program. Using my own tracking devices, I converted at 4.9% last week... but with overture, they're only showing 2%.. pretty crazy difference huh?... btw... doing very similar campaigns / kw landing pages... etc in adwords and converting 9% on my own stats and 10% on adwords stats...

... so yes I am very frustrated w/ overture... :(

Said it was still under investigation

It's very interesting to hear that something like that happens to others :rolleyes:

I'm running a few campaigns across different search engines, one of them is Yahoo! and everything was going very well, until about the end of July, when suddenly my conversions went down by about 20%. Not due to anything i've done... It is really interesting that Yahoo had nothing constructive to say, other than the standard, try adding more kwds???

Things have stabilised since, but nowhere as good as they used to be.

Firstly can I say I was so pleased to find this forum and that people are having the same problems as I am? I have 3 accounts on Overture Yahoo! Since the end of September I have noticed real problems with my conversion tracking. I also log our conversions internally (only volume and category and not to keyword level) so could clearly see there was a problem.

Every one of these accounts is showing at least 40% less conversions (and increasing day by day) then they were at the beginning of September 2005. One of my accounts holds 7000 keywords so as you can imagine trying to monitor performance of these keywords is a major problem.

These 3 accounts also run on Google and Miva without any change in the volume of conversions or difference from my logs. I have mentioned until I am blue in the face to Overture Yahoo! that they have a major problem and it possibly can't only be me that has this problem - so far they have done nothing! They say they can not find a problem with their tracking.

Has anyone had any success as yet to getting this problem solved? Let me know as soon as you can as I really am pulling my hair out here!

Thought it was just me. Experiencing the same problem since September, thought it was our landing pages enhancement, nada, the problem is really with overture.

Thought it was just me. Experiencing the same problem since September, thought it was our landing pages enhancement, nada, the problem is really with overture.

Have you been in touch with them to query as to why?

Hi Kerry,

No i didn't contact them, as i said previously at the same time we did some enhancements to our landing pages and thought that was the cause.
We were on the point to revert to the previous landing pages by the end of November, but after reading this post i feel like the new landing pages didn't really get the exposure they should have got so that we could test them correctly , so i'll leave the new landing pages for now and will either contact them or see how things evolve until end November before taking a decision.

I have been at them for a month on this subject and they say there is nothing their end -which is a certainly not true! I and our technical team have been through our site and systems with a fine tooth combe and come up with blank!

I did some tests last night to one keyword with 6 different email addresses and clicked via Yahoo! MSN and Overture search itself and am waiting for the stats on their site to update to see how many of these registered as conversions before I have another go at them and ask them to trace any that are missing

I'm not happy to know this is happening but, I'm glad that its not just me experiencing it.

I should hope they would consider how big of an impact this makes for their advertisers. In my case it's a difference of about 3% conversion rate from what overture reports to the actual click data we get from our own tracking. Thats pretty big.

I have only been able to speak with my "representative".. never been escalated to more "important" people... I hope someone their reads this thread -

HELLO OVERTURE

Yes, i think Yahoo! needs to dig a bit deeper. Maybe there is something happening with their traffic and their partners, that they don't want to disclose...
I don't use their conversion tracker(we have a different system internally), so would you guys say this is a purely mechanical fault or is it an overall quality of traffic problem?

definitely quality of traffic

I actually spoke to one of Overture Yahoo's programmers on Friday and he admitted to me they have got a problem and that it wasn't only me with this issue (it's taken them a month to admit all this!) However they can't find what the problem is.

I was informed that this is a problem that originated in the States (I am UK based) and he was waiting for a response from there to help him understand how to fix the tracking converter. He is suppose to be getting back to me today (Monday 14th) or Tuesday at the latest He also said it might be an idea to use the SE optimiser tool on the site rather than the converter but that it was a lot more completed to administrator. Anyone know if this could work??

I thing the only reason I managed to speak to a programmer was because I sent this tread through to Yahoo! on the Friday morning and they were wanting a conference call by 12 noon. It might help you all if you send this tread to your account managers/representatives

definitely quality of traffic

Sorry I slightly disagree here - my own tracked converstions are showing no dip or only a slight dip in volume or quality. I personally think this is more of a machanical problem as the site stats are showing 40% dip since the end of September

For the one client that we were most clearly able to ID the problem (because we hadn't been making other account changes when the conversions fell) the drop was around 40% also, starting on September 29th.

Yahoo's reticence on this matter is not encouraging, as is their failure to fix it after nearly two months. I suggest anyone who is encountering this problem to call, call, call-- insist on logging a technical ticket. For the record, here is the email we got from them:

"We are have just recently confirmed that some advertisers are currently experiencing an issue with their Conversion Counter data. For these advertisers, Conversion Counter is undercounting conversions as of September 29th, 2005. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience you are experiencing and want you to know that we are working to restore full functionality to this feature. In the meantime, we suggest disregarding Conversion Counter data as of September 29th. We will provide more information once this issue has been resolved."

"In the meantime, we suggest disregarding Conversion Counter data as of September 29th. We will provide more information once this issue has been resolved."

Is this some sort of joke?

Lots of errors in the DTC today as well. I just can't get it to work!

Yes it's in a right old state today - full of error messages and no info...............good aren't they?!

definitely quality of traffic

I agree, if you pay anywhere of $5 per click then look at your Yahoo's refers. 10% from Yahoo and MSN and the rest form not-in-a-life-time-will-convert-search.com type of sites 90% comeonnnn Yahoo

Is Yahoo getting that desperate? What will happen when MSN is gone....

I agree, if you pay anywhere of $5 per click then look at your Yahoo's refers. 10% from Yahoo and MSN and the rest form not-in-a-life-time-will-convert-search.com type of sites 90% comeonnnn Yahoo

Is Yahoo getting that desperate? What will happen when MSN is gone....

How can you check where your Yahoo traffic is coming from? I'd like to see how much traffic is really through MSN so that we can figure out how much it will go down when MSN fully launches its own product.

Hello Everyone

Sent Yahoo this thread a few days ago and got this reply

"We are experiencing issues with our conversion counter. Our technical team is working to resolved the issue as quickly as possible. We expect to have an update soon, however, we do not have an ETA on the resolution.

In the meantime, we are offering Search Optimizer, a tracking and bid management tool, free to our Platinum advertisers. Search Optimizer offers more robust data than the conversion counter and it has the ability to track other campaigns as well.

We have team dedicated to assisting clients with webex demos (education), implementation and training.

You may call our Platinum team to transfer to this department."


Anyone tried this before? I will call them today and let you guys know what they say.

In the meantime Adwords has the new analytics tab. Have you guys used it?

Yes, i'm just in the process of migrating my campaign to the Search Optimiser software that Overture offers. It sounds and it looks really good - the proof however will be in the pudding! :D Hopefully it will not turn out to be like the DTC ;) The service so far has been great though...

With regards to the Google analytics service, that sounds really good too. There has been a lot of hype about that release and as you would expect, a lot of reviews and personal opinions. I happen to like this review (http://www.andrechaperon.com/2005/11/google-analytics-free-website-analytics-service-for-all/) i found recently if you want to have a look it may be of use :)

Yes I was told to try the Overture search optimiser tool until they can fix the conversion tracking problem - only trouble is.......I can't find the thing on the site to download. Can someone give me a clue where it is hiding? :confused:

With regards the Google Analytics tool, my colleague has tried it on one of his accounts and is not over impressed as it doesn't always work and you get redirected to the home page. The statistical data it provides however is useful. I think Google have been slightly surprised at the volume of users trying this new tool and are therefore experiencing a few problems.

You can find the information on the tool here http://www.content.overture.com/d/UKm/ac/prod.jhtml. This is for the UK part of it, but i am sure that you can find the same on the US side as well(if you need to). :)

You can find the information on the tool here http://www.content.overture.com/d/UKm/ac/prod.jhtml. This is for the UK part of it, but i am sure that you can find the same on the US side as well(if you need to). :)

It was UK I wanted - thanks :)

Yahoo has many more problems with their technology beyond the conversion counter. I was not surprised at all to receive their email basically saying that any conversion data we've reported in the last several months is invalid. That's insane! Here are just some top of mind problems we've had with our account lately.

1. Sorting - the cost/conversion field on the campaign summary won't sort, has been broken for weeks.

2. "new term" - had many clicks and some conversions for a mystery keyword in October. When pressed for an explaination (2 different Yahoo service reps), we were told not to worry about it, they are legitimate keywords and that someday in the future it'll correct itself and display what the real keywords were (this is a joke right, am I on Punked?).

3. Reports won't load - we couldn't get category detail reports to load...would take 48 hours and still would not load. Called several time, spoke to various reps, finally they admited they are having "trouble" with their reports and to try again later....what a joke. As of today, still waiting days and often will never get category detail to load.

It has almost become impossible to efficiently monitor and manage our Overture account. They always promise the big upgrades/changes, but it seems that plateform is nose diving since Yahoo entered the picture. Get your act together guys!

According to Yahoo this conversion counter problem is fixed and all the old data is restored. Haven't run reports to confirm that the old data is there, but I have seen the pop in conversions for current data.

Well it certainly looks like the conversion counter has been fixed. I can see the correct data for the whole of December but I don't think they have backed it into November as my figures still don't match for this month.

I was in the process of changing over to optimiser and I'm now in a dilema - Should I? - Should'nt? change over. :confused:

If any of you have changed over do you find the optimiser better that using conversion counter alone. Advice would be very welcome :)

All,
Thanks for your posts and feedback.

Yes, it is true - Conversion Counter is once again counting conversions from your Sponsored Search listings (and has been since 11/24/05). We experienced a technical issue that caused some advertisers to see a sudden drop in counted conversions as of 9/29/05. Please be assured that this drop in counted conversions was not an accurate reflection of the performance of your listings, but rather an issue with the Conversion Counter feature itself.

On behalf of Yahoo, I apologize for this disruption in your Conversion Counter service. Feel free to reach out to your rep with any questions or if you don’t have one, send me a private email. I’ll be sure to help you out.

YahooSarah

Hi Kerrymk,

I moved over to search optimiser about three weeks ago, so i've mostly been collecting data so far but it doesn't look promissing... The stats that the system is tracking are not correct. I've only started to use the bid management section, and that seems to be working fine - but i haven't had a chance to explore any deeper :o

I would say that the benefit of the optimiser will come into play when you use the bid management functionality-that's when you may have an advantage rather than just using the conversion tool.

That's my 2c worth :D

The "fixed" conversion counter is now producing far larger figures than previously and we're left questioning their legitimacy. If this data is true, our cost/conversion has dropped 10 fold, conversions are up several hundred %, etc. We have many examples of a keyword converting 2-3 times without a single clickthrough. Yahoo claims this is based on old cookies, etc. Based on the "fixed" conversion data, Overture, at least in our world, is all of a sudden hundreds times more cost effective than Google and this has never been the case previously. The question is, if Yahoo could miss that their conversion counter is reporting false conversion data for several months what makes us all believe they're aren't reporting false conversion data still, but now the figures are inflated, not reduced.

YahooSarah,

How about fixing the quality of the traffic? Get rid of your "network search" partners that generate nothing but fake clicks.

Only interested in real traffic from Yahoo.com, why are you forcing us to take all this traffic that never convert to nothing?

thanks rozovichak for your 2c worth - much appreciated :D

I think I am going to continue with the Optimiser tool as I think it will be interesting to see if the Conversion Counter and the Optimiser tool report the same conversion figures - I can then see if things start going wrong again as I don't have much faith in their sofware lately

Very good idea!!! :D

Sorry for the cheesy headline :D (i couldn't resist it)

I just wanted to give you some more feedback on the Search Optimiser section of this thread - in case some of you have considered it.

I have been with the tool for over a month now, and i can honestly say that even if the tracking part of it is not a 100% up to scratch (and i don't think any of those type of tools are) the bid management side of it is working wonders. My CPA has almost halved since the tool has taken over :cool:

Kerrymk, how is your setup going - have you switched the bid tool on yet?

rozovichak
The set-up is complete and working. I switched the bid management on last week as all was looking ok.
I have got a problem with (as you mentioned) the tracking. As it is not showing accurately, I have allowed it to lower my CPC on certain keywords based on the reported volume of conversions for the cost of those keyword being slightly high. However when I checked on DTC stats the conversions were nearly 300% higher than in Optimiser - so the jury is still out on whether it suits us or not and of course which lot of their stats is actually correct.

Not ready to through the towel in just yey though :D