How expanded is Yahoo Advanced Match?

[AussieWebmaster]

We have been noticing large increases in impressions (and clicks from that) but a major decrease in conversion percentages,

I had thought Yahoo was now using expanded match similar to Google - did a search and found little info on whether this was the case.

But when I went into Yahoo itself I came across some interesting pieces of information in their help section.

The biggest being:
The Advanced match type displays your ads for a broader range of searches relevant to your keywords, titles and descriptions and/or web content. If you use the Advanced match type, and to help maximize the relevancy of your listings to search users, make sure you take advantage of Excluded Words, which are words or phrases that prevent a listing from matching a search query.

So I guess that tells us that it is doing some serious expanded matching.

And remember that Advanced is the default setting when setting up a new campaign.

[PPC]

I have also noticed increased traffic with little to no increase in conversion. We are not using advanced match so it might actually be new partner(s) in the Yahoo network.

[AussieWebmaster]

Okay... definitely another possibility

[Mel66]

I think you're both correct - Advanced Match is too expanded for my liking; and you definitely have to watch for low-quality partners coming in and out of the network. We had one pop up a few weeks ago that sent us hundreds of bad clicks in a few days. By the time I contacted Yahoo about them, they'd shut down their site. Strange.

All that said, our Yahoo results continue to improve. I think they are working to eliminate some of the bad partner sites; and the Quality Score/ranking system seems to be working well.

Melissa

[cogbox]

I really wish that Yahoo would implement the ability to selectively filter out certain partners. There are a number that continually drive very very poor traffic to us through Yahoo Search Marketing. It is a shame that we have to continually funnel a portion of our budgets to these very poor quality sites.

[PPC]

Originally Posted by cogbox

I really wish that Yahoo would implement the ability to selectively filter out certain partners. There are a number that continually drive very very poor traffic to us through Yahoo Search Marketing. It is a shame that we have to continually funnel a portion of our budgets to these very poor quality sites.

I absloutely agree.

[Discovery]

Word is "Site Exclusion" is going to be here sooner rather than later.

When did they start giving search suggestions as a drop down in the search box? How are these suggestions derived? Based on current profitablity models? Or popular searches. Popular searches would then lead to a higher competition and theoretically cost for certain keywords...

I understand the use of the suggestion, but somehow I just dont like how it could impact our marketing campaigns.

Discovery

[sem4u]

Originally Posted by Discovery

Word is "Site Exclusion" is going to be here sooner rather than later.

That would be very, very welcome Discovery. I am sick of seeing Yahoo partner sites sending useless traffic. I have some sending more traffic than Yahoo itself sometimes. At the moment with one account I am actively bidding to be placed just outside of the top 5 results, so as not to appear on these sites. Sure you can claim refunds but for small accounts it is often not worth the time it takes.

[bereydellet]

I was reading this forum as I am going to start running campaigns on Yahoo really soon and I am curious to have your thoughts on:
- to start with, should we use standard match?
- should we enable the content network (I am reading that it includes really poor sites)
Thanks for your help.

[AussieWebmaster]

YPN can be good but depends on the niche. Also do your due diligence with tracking and analytics and you can drop the ones not working... remember to have much lower bids for content