Yahoo Search Marketing Rant

[spenland]

Well I just got off a very long and frusrating call with Yahoo Search Marketing. I transferred my account into the new Yahoo Search Marketing platform and was hoping for an improvement over their previously almost unusable system. After careful examination of the log files on my website I discovered that there were several odd referrers coming in using my yahoo PPC tag I place on the end of ever PPC ad. It became apparent to me that even though I had opted out of the Yahoo Content Match, that I was still getting PPC traffic from so called Yahoo "affiliates".

After talking with a manager at Yahoo, I was informed that even if you opt out of the Content Match you still will recieve traffic from a so called "Distribution Network" that is buried in the Terms and Conditions contract.

"The "Distribution Network" means the network, including, as applicable for the relevant Programs, the Yahoo! Search Marketing Websites, properties, and Third Party Products, through which your ads are distributed. "Third Party Products" mean collectively third party websites, properties, content, applications (including mobile and/or wireless), and/or e-mails that make ads available as a link from, an add-on service to, or otherwise in connection with the Distribution Network." -Yahoo T & C

Has anyone else been aware of this? Around 40% of the traffic I receive from Yahoo PPC is from these "Distribution Network" sites. These sites are all in no way related to the content of my website and are obvious parked domains that are employing individuals to click ads to increase revenue.

If Yahoo doesn't give us some way to opt out of these sites then I will be investing my advertising dollars elsewhere.

Any thoughts?

[dann]

By all means yes! You do have a right to specify where and when your ads appear. Yahoo has a network of "partners" such as Juno and NetZero, yes you should have a way of opting out of these but at the moment it seems unlikely.
Just as AOL and Comcast display Google ads above organic search queries, naturally Yahoo! does the same on their partner sites, this is most likely where you are getting those hits.
This is not all bad just be sure that you landing page will convert surfers into buyers. If you are selling something don't put FREE in the ad.
Make sure you put any cost in the ad and this will not only cut down on crappy referrals, but will overall increase your trust and ROI.
Hope this helps!
Dan

[dburdon]

Spenland,

unfortunately you've reached the same inevitable conclusion as I made 10 months ago. See:

Yahoo click fraud exposure.

Essentially the answers I received from Yahoo were entirely unsatisfactory. The Yahoo network is filled with all manner of dubious - so called - search operations. I investigated several that regularly appeared in client web analytics. Unfortunately, as you have found, you cannot opt out of this part of the Yahoo distribution network.

My recommendation is to reduce your dependency on Yahoo.

[untmarkb]

Yep, you are correct that you cannot opt out. If you want to see a list of some of their partner sites you can visit searchmarketing.yahoo.com/srch/network.php.

My advice is that if you aren't getting the ROI you need, then don't advertise. If you are, then continue. It is that simple. And this applies to every different search engine and form of online advertising.

[janeth]

We looked into this a while back and was told that there is no way to opt out of the partners sites, like you can with Google.

Yahoo also relies on the partners sites for the security of the clicks, from what I understand.

If my understanding is correct then it means that the person that owns the site and is making money on the clicks is also some what in charge of the click fraud. My understanding is that Yahoo does have some security in place but it does not amount to much. This is my understand from a while back and I'm not sure how accurate it is.

[kevsta]

Yahoo Search Marketing is a joke IMO.

I parallel-tested it with Google ppc most of last year, and cancelled Yahoo in October (still billed in November due to their rules) as a total waste of time and money, esp in relation to Google.

Most months my bill was between £5 and £9 due to the extremely low amount of queries. However as Yahoo impose a £20 mininum monthly spend they happily charged me £20 every month anyway. (I was not aware of this at all, must be well-hidden in the Terms)

i did get a "helpful" email at the middle of every month, advising me to loosen my search terms, or up my bid amounts so as not to get penalised. I got up to £0.70 per bid, (£0.25-£0.40 on Google) and dropped the search back from "Triathlon Training Camp" or Triathlon Camp" to just "Triathlon" which should have a huge search volume in comparison to the fairly specific terms I was using, and still couldn't get past £12 per month and so got robbed for 3 months worth of £8 per month. I know it's not a lot of money, but its the principle.

Basically they were penalising me, for not them having enough users searching my terms.

Also I didnt get a single conversion from them in 6 months, and a handful of site hits per week, compared to 30-50 hits from Google and 2-3 conversions per week. ..if I had used those search terms and bid amounts in Google, it would have cost a fortune.

IMO Yahoo PPC are rubbish and I wouldn't bother again.

[Schrisa]

If you don't simply give up on Yahoo, there are two things you can try:

1- Make sure that you use their geo-targeting feature, and limit where your traffic can come from. That could potentially cut out some of the bad traffic. If you're seeing a lot of traffic from the Bahamas and you don't get any sales from there, turn off that traffic. You'll still see the traffic in your logs...but Yahoo won't [shouldn't] be billing you for it.
2- It will be VERY VERY VERY VERY frustrating, it will take MUCH longer than the two weeks they promise you, but if you're seeing a lot of traffic from a given referrer and no conversions, you can report it to your rep as "potential invalid clicks" [aka click fraud] and perhaps get some of your money back. Also be sure to check your logs and make sure that the traffic from isn't users from a handful of IPs, and that the user IPs aren't open proxy servers.

Good luck with your traffic!

[blitzen]

Oh, you hit a sore spot with me.

I discussed with Yahoo! about who shows my ads They don't separate out their associates from the Yahoo! search. That is, when you sign up at Overture, Yahoo! will allow just about any one advertise your site. You can't say that you want your ads to show up on only Yahoo! or only in the USA.

Content Match is a broad thing where, if you sell furniture, your ads can go under a generic category of Furniture. Overture's 3rd party affiliates can select a category of furniture to display on their websites. Nice for those receiving the advertising bucks.

Also be aware that if you enter the search phrase, "yellow widgets", your ad can show up for anyone searching for "yellow widgets in Timbuktu". Overture has the option for negative keywords, but I don't have much faith in using them (I do for what I can think of). There are many more negative words than absolute ones that I want hit on. I'd have to put in almost the entire dictionary!

E.g., we sell widgets. So I use the negative "how to make" and "instructions for making", "blue widgets", "green widgets". How many permutations can you come up with?

The New Overture
I was disappointed that Yahoo! Overture didn't do more in this so-called upgrade such as limiting who shows your ads. I'd pay alot more to get ads in front of my target audience. It's a relatively minor change to limit country that shows your ad. It's better to limit the market (e.g., toys should be marketed to toy buyers and users).

I don't know what the hoopla is about with their new site. Revamping something that worked isn't the way to "move forward".

I noticed one unfavorable result with the New Overture: they give you an approx position. Ok, maybe your competition is changing their bids that fast. But, I don't think that's why. Do you really think that this overhaul was to benefit the paying customer? Think again.

Have you noticed Yahoo! paid listings from Product Submit showing up in the list, at the top on the right. They're starting to intermix Overture paying customers with Product Submit's paying customers.

Forget Targeting Your Market on the Net
The PPC thing is distressing because the advertiser has absolutely no control over who shows your ads. If you have a toy shop, there is nothing stopping your ads from being displayed by a cigar shop/directory, or auto store/directory, or garden shop/directory. If you don't sell outside the USA, your ads are still displayed internationally with Yahoo!.

Go figure.

Internet Advertising is not Traditional Advertising
If this were a traditional advertising campaign, you can decide which magazines or newspapers will show your ads. You can control the direct mail campaign by purchasing lists from relevant magazines. You can decide which billboard will show your ads. You can, indeed, target your market the right way.

Internet marketing is a totally different mindset. I wish they would hire some marketing experts to help them revamp their services.

It's apparent that these search engines don't care about targeting the right market for their paying customers. It'll take a bit of programming that they apparently don't want to pay for. At least AdWords will let you opt out of your ad being on 3rd party sites or outside the USA.

But, that's still not good enough.

What Else Can You Do?
Say you want/need to be up there in #1, 2, or 3 spot at Yahoo! There's no competition that you can go to that can position your ads in Yahoo! through a PPC campaign. Organic SEO, maybe, but it takes time. That's why many merchants opt for PPC: they weigh the cost against losing sales over time while optimizing for organic searches.

I wonder how close to a monopoly this is.

Where do we go from here?

[janeth]

My understanding was that they had limited the countries now.

[dburdon]

Originally Posted by Schrisa

If you don't simply give up on Yahoo, there are two things you can try:

1- Make sure that you use their geo-targeting feature, and limit where your traffic can come from. That could potentially cut out some of the bad traffic. If you're seeing a lot of traffic from the Bahamas and you don't get any sales from there, turn off that traffic. You'll still see the traffic in your logs...but Yahoo won't [shouldn't] be billing you for it.

Schrisa,
one of the persistent click raiders I spotted was located in Asia but logging onto a dot.co.uk (so called) search site. I suspected that the (so called) search engine employed people in Asia to generate clicks. I used IP addresses to trace the geographic origination of clicks. The (so called) UK based search site never generated any UK derived traffic. I reported my suspicions to Yahoo and received an appalling reply from their laughably named "Customer Solutions Director". I suggested they were retitled fraud cover-up director. Now Yahoo Search Marketing gets just 1 to 2% of client budgets.

[BobbyBill]

Yeah yahoo is nto even on the same planet as google when it comes to PPC, they're very frustrating and the interface is a joke.

[Rational Beaver]

I have been working to fix a large number of client accounts that were recently transfered to the new Yahoo system. One of the problems I found relates to this topic directly:

When your account is trasfered, the Content Network will be automatically enabled for all of the campaigns that are created. If you don't like the Content Network, be sure to check that.

Also important: If you had tracking URLs for each of your keywords, that has likely been screwed up in transfer. What I've seen is that for each Ad Group, one keyword will have it's custom URL stolen and assigned as the destination URL of the Ad for that group. The other keywords are likely fine. To fix this, simply copy the destination URL for the ad, change it back to the default URL with no tracking, and then paste the URL into the custom URL box for the keyword that has none. Then repeat this for every single Ad Group...

[ken000]

About 3 years ago, it took me 10 emails and several phone calls over a 3 month period to get Overture (now Yahoo) to admit that I had been the victim of click fraud to the tune of about $7,000. They wouldn't refund my money however; they just issued me a credit!

I do not trust the analytics on any PPC site; not Yahoo or Google. I refuse to use code from anyone who tells me "It will help me". BS! It will help them!

[Webdango]

See my post at:
http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=63887

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by ken000

About 3 years ago, it took me 10 emails and several phone calls over a 3 month period to get Overture (now Yahoo) to admit that I had been the victim of click fraud to the tune of about $7,000. They wouldn't refund my money however; they just issued me a credit!

I do not trust the analytics on any PPC site; not Yahoo or Google. I refuse to use code from anyone who tells me "It will help me". BS! It will help them!

I'm interested in showing click fraud. What kind of data did you have and how did you analyze it?

[ken000]

I didn't use any data - just common sense. They were charging me for roughly 30,000 clicks over a 1 week period during in which time I didn't have any change in sales.

They initially tried to tell me that so and so was running some kind of promotion which accounted for all the extra clicks. I asked them why I hadn't received one single sale from so many clicks. They responded that they were not responsible for sales. I told them that that explanation lacked any form of rational thought pattern. I then politely but firmly worked my way up the chain of command until I finally reached someone with a brain that functioned.

[JohneeMac]

I was thinking of investing in Yahoo but after reading the above i dont think ill bother

• You cant opt of out Network clicks

• Minimum spend of $20

• The interface sucks

With these three criminal errors coming from a business that wants to compete wih big G is pathetic. No wonder G is taking over the world

[ctabuk]

www.statcounter.com state that they have installed fool proof software to eliminate PPC Click Fraud - it is available only via the monthly pay for version.

[kevsta]

Originally Posted by JohneeMac

I was thinking of investing in Yahoo but after reading the above i dont think ill bother

• You cant opt of out Network clicks

• Minimum spend of $20

£20 GBP -equiv to about $38-40.00 US

• The interface sucks

With these three criminal errors coming from a business that wants to compete wih big G is pathetic. No wonder G is taking over the world

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by ctabuk

www.statcounter.com state that they have installed fool proof software to eliminate PPC Click Fraud - it is available only via the monthly pay for version.

I wonder if statcounter provides enough data to challenge and win your PPC service.

I'm using the free version of AsRep, www.asrep.com. Although it's written for AdSense people, it gives the info I need. It doesn't have the data crunching built in for monitoring PPC from the advertiser end, but that's okay. I can export the data and analyze it myself.

Here is what it can do.

• 1. The full referring URL including parameters. The parameters help to track the search terms used, exactly what service was used, etc.
  2. The page that referrer landed on including parameters. The parameters tell me the the source. E.g., In Overture, they report the search terms the user input and your keyword/phrase used to match the hit. This helps to determine whether I'm using the right keywords and whether to add yet more negative keywords.
  3. Time of day my page was hit.
  4. IP of referer. Good for tracking multiple hits.
  5. I can restrict my IP (I'm on a static IP) from being logged.
  6. Country of referer.
  7. Reports for the hour, day, month, etc.
  8. Export as CSV for further analysis.

I can also watch the path people take through my website in real time or later during the analysis. If you try this software, you'd want to set up the params, click the [Log] at the upper right, then click [CSV] later down the page. The CSV exports only what is listed. You'd have to page through and export to get all lines exported.

The info I would like to include is time spent per page. If any one knows how to capture that in Perl, please share it. Our server stats isn't setup to capture hit and runs.

Can you think of other information necessary to have to challenge the PPC services?

[artecona]

If someone clicks on one of those non qualified links in one of Yahoo's partner-affiliate sites it get's counted. You are charged nomatter what type of wonderful analytics tools you have. I can clearly see that wealthygeek.com sent one of our sites 4500 visitors and we were changed at least $1 -$3.5 a click. We see hundreds of sites in their network for just one PPC capaign. These are not cotent match but true Yahoo partners. They are truly SPAM sites. There is no perfect tool to deal with this as they decide what keyword to use in the URL string and it has nothing to do with what your paying for a search result. Yahoo is taking advantage of inefficiencies on the web as opportunists. It is clear that they are out gunned by Google for them to stoop to this bottom feeder strategy. I propose someone compiling a list of these spammy Yahoo partner sites. Does anyone know of a publishing of these site anywhere? They won't deny that they have thousands of sites that focus on common misspellings, SEO and PPC in other engines etc.. But they won't confirm any of these sites either. It think it's time to bring this issue out into the light and let the stockholder's decide what they think about it.

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by artecona

... Does anyone know of a publishing of these site anywhere? ... It think it's time to bring this issue out into the light and let the stockholder's decide what they think about it.

I agree. Let's put our heads together and do something about the abuse from all PPC services.

What we need is a place to gather the list of abusive sites as well as offer strategies on collecting and analyzing data from our end.

When enough statistically significant data are compiled and analyzed, we can then approach others (the PPC services, stockholders, media, Congress) about it if nothing is cleaned up by then.

If there's no site reporting/listing the abuse, will this forum allow space for this sort of thing?

[artecona]

I agree with you Blitzen. I don't believe if it would be fair to WebproWorld to do this without their permission in advance, but it would be brave and appreciated it they did allow us to list the "Yahoo Partners". To me this is important for the health of web marketing and the search engines in general. If I set up a site would it be within WeproWorld's terms and conditions of use to post it here?

[spenland]

Wow, thanks for all the great replies guys, when your post gets featured in the newsletter I guess you get more than the average responses. Apparently most of you already knew about Yahoo's deceptive search marketing, it is just unbelievable to me that they deploy these types of deceptive tactics. I will be removing my account from Yahoo and using the money with Google who have at least given us the choice to disable this BS.

Thanks again for letting me vent!

[deepsand]

Not only do you have no control over which affiliated "search engines" return your PPC ads, there's no guarantee that such will be displayed solely as a result of a user search.

Case in point, ESPN Sports. During college football season, if one searched for a given team's page, ESPN pre-filled their search field with "[team name] footbal ticket," automatically executed the search, and displayed the resulting Overture PPC listings.

In doing so, they effectively bypassed one's having opted out of Content Match; i.e., they diplayed Precision Match results in a Content Match context!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by spenland

<snip>

I will be removing my account from Yahoo and using the money with Google who have at least given us the choice to disable this BS.

<snip>

Google's "Do No Evil" mantra should itself be taken with a grain of salt. Take, for their example, their PPI program, whereby you explicitly select certain affilates on which to have your ad displayed, on a Cost Per Impression.

Not only do you have no control over which page(s) on the affiliate's site your ad appears on, Google claims to be unable to determine such for you.

So, you can see your being billed for clicks, but you may not yourself ever be able to view your add on the site in question!

Here too, Google has abrogated their responsibilty for accountability, and placed such in the hands of their affiliates.

[blitzen]

I don't get it. We have a registered trademark, Gardecor®. When I search Yahoo! for "gardecor", PPC ads come up.

Wrought Iron Benches on Sale
www[dot]benchesbythebunches[dot]com - 100's of benches to choose from. Save up to 50%. Order today.
Primitive Iron Decor of All Kinds
www[dot]arusticgarden[dot]com - Primitive iron like benches, stepping stones, pot racks and antiques.

Don't tell me that these people are bidding on our trademark!?

Okay - I looked at the url and there's nothing there about gardecor.

OVRAW=gardecor&OVKEY=wrought%20iron%20bench&OVMTC= advanced
They're using Advanced Match
I searched "gardecor"
The keyword/phrase the merchant bid on was "wrought iron bench"

Now, how in heaven's name did that match with "gardecor"???????

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by blitzen

I don't get it. We have a registered trademark, Gardecor®. When I search Yahoo! for "gardecor", PPC ads come up.

Don't tell me that these people are bidding on our trademark!?

Okay - I looked at the url and there's nothing there about gardecor.

OVRAW=gardecor&OVKEY=wrought%20iron%20bench&OVMTC= advanced
They're using Advanced Match
I searched "gardecor"
The keyword/phrase the merchant bid on was "wrought iron bench"

Now, how in heaven's name did that match with "gardecor"???????

Firstly, Yahoo does not allow bidding for PPC listings using the trade/service mark of another as a search term; Google, on the other hand, does!

And, as you observe, that is not what's happening here.

It appears that Yahoo's revised Sponsored Search program is now looking at the Content of the Organic listings that result from the search for "gardecor," and then matching PPC listings of those bidding for search terms relevant to said content.

Yet, when I do a search for "hounddogtours," the 1st 4 Sponsored Results are all for Ring Tones, where the Listing's Title contains the string "Hound Dog," as if I had instead searched for "hound dog tours." And, it makes no difference at all whether or not I enclose my search phrase in quotation marks!

Curiouser & curiouser.

Either Yahoo's search function is now completely FUBAR, or they've come up with yet one more way to get PPC ads displayed where they ought not, thus increasing their revenues.

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by deepsand

... It appears that Yahoo's revised Sponsored Search program is now looking at the Content of the Organic listings that result from the search for "gardecor," and then matching PPC listings of those bidding for search terms relevant to said content.
...
Curiouser & curiouser.

Either Yahoo's search function is now completely FUBAR, or they've come up with yet one more way to get PPC ads displayed where they ought not, thus increasing their revenues.

Scary. "Gardecor®" is a word with no meaning - we fabricated it. It's the name of our company. No one else can use that word without our approval.

I wonder if Yahoo! is infringing on my trademark? Time to phone Attorney-Man.

Does anyone want to predict the advice I get?

[artecona]

You know now that you mention it, I have seen Yahoo partners bidding on Trademarked names in Google. Yahoo is using our well tested and researched PPC terms to make money by running PPC campaigns on Google. For example I have seen Yahoo partners bid in a competing fashion for the name of a company that runs PPC in their engine. So let's say your company name is "NAHPO" and you bid on this term in Yahoo. A Yahoo partner can bid 10 cents on this term in Google. When you click to their site they have a directory type listing of all your competitors along side your site. If you click on any of them they will be charged for a different term altogether.

Here is a real example I just found. If you search Amone (trademarked) in Google you get AmOne's site, a competitor site and a Yahoo partner; loanforsmallbusiness.info/. Once you click through you will see many sites all competitors. If you click them you can see in their overture tracking that they are actually being charged for terms like "small business loan". Here is a snip of the tracking code of one of the sites listed in: "small%20business%20loan&OVKEY=small%20business%20 loan" This site uses Overture Console to track their marketing. What is sad is that this company has no idea they paid $3 + for a term they never bid on and that they are paying for tracking that is worthless, worse that worthless. I would rather have no information than bad information. Also that the terms they bid on are being used to promote their competitors sites on another engine. Wow it is tough to keep track of all the ways they are being devious here.

It's really amazing to me that they think this way. It reminds me of a story of a man that during the depression painted a perfect $20.00 bill. He was caught and went to jail. (I guess it must not have been 100% perfect;) All that work to do something so deceptive when he had so many things he could have done with his talent.

[blitzen]

I don't recall which SE PPC it was, but I used to see the big companies and auction site/s listed in the PPC for "Gardecor®".

The listing would be something like like "Buy A Book About Gardecor" or "Buy Gardecor".

HA! There are no books about my company! I don't use auction websites at all! Dast you fool the pubic you swashbuckling idiots!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by blitzen

Scary. "Gardecor®" is a word with no meaning - we fabricated it. It's the name of our company. No one else can use that word without our approval.

I wonder if Yahoo! is infringing on my trademark? Time to phone Attorney-Man.

Does anyone want to predict the advice I get?

I predict that you'll be told there there is no infringement.

It is not illegal for others to use your name, without your permission, in their content. E.g., if I sell used vehicles, it is perfectly legal for me to advertise that I sell Fords, Chevrolets, etc..

Infringement, in this example, occurs only when such usage gives rise to the reasonable possibility that others might mistake me for Ford Motors or General Motors.

In your case, the organic listing themselves contain entries by entities other than yourself. It is clear, from the text of the listings, that the other parties, whether they be those named in either the organic listings or the sponsored ones, are not your compnay.

[Jeffff]

Talk about a Sore Spot.... I too just wanted to voice my opinion that Yahoo simply has to have one of the worst search marketing programs in the world.

I have been forced to stay with them for over 9 years now and I now I am VOWING to wein myself off their Fraudulent actions and lies . I have complained to them for years and all I received from them is a cheap scripted answers.

They just revamped their whole program but instead of making it fair and easy like Google's program, they made it extremely confusing and to me useless. There should be some liability on their part through the federal government for fraud.

I am even involved in a class action lawsuit against Yahoo that was supposed to be settled in Oct 06 but I have not yet heard of any payments made to any advertisers.

Stay away from Yahoo search marketing!!!

I also want to take a moment to thank this Forum for it's being. I am reading everyones posts every day...Very nice informative people with great subjects.

Jeff

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by deepsand

... It appears that Yahoo's revised Sponsored Search program is now looking at the Content of the Organic listings that result from the search for "gardecor," and then matching PPC listings of those bidding for search terms relevant to said content.
...
Curiouser & curiouser.

Either Yahoo's search function is now completely FUBAR, or they've come up with yet one more way to get PPC ads displayed where they ought not, thus increasing their revenues.

Action and Result
A Cease and Desist was sent to Yahoo!.
Within a week of them receiving the certified CnD letter, Yahoo! reprogrammed their alg to stop using trademarks (at least my tradermark) to determine the search results from other websites.

FYI - the reasons in the C and D given were as follows:

• 1) You are using my trademark to determine what websites to list. You do not have my permission to use my trademark in this manner. This practice dilutes my trademark by blurring.
  
  2) Websites not affiliated with Gardecor® are listed when my trademark is searched. This can cause or is likely to cause consumer confusion.
  
  3) My competitors are listed above the Gardecor® website. This may have caused, can cause, or is likely to cause loss of sales for my company.
  
  4) The ecommerce websites that show up in your paid listings when a search is done using my trademark do not have permission to use my trademark.
  
  5) You are using my registered trademark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution or advertising of goods or services.

Hope this information is useful!

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by blitzen

Action and Result
A Cease and Desist was sent to Yahoo!.
Within a week of them receiving the certified CnD letter, Yahoo! reprogrammed their alg to stop using trademarks (at least my tradermark) to determine the search results from other websites.

FYI - the reasons in the C and D given were as follows:

• 1) You are using my trademark to determine what websites to list. You do not have my permission to use my trademark in this manner. This practice dilutes my trademark by blurring.
  
  2) Websites not affiliated with Gardecor® are listed when my trademark is searched. This can cause or is likely to cause consumer confusion.
  
  3) My competitors are listed above the Gardecor® website. This may have caused, can cause, or is likely to cause loss of sales for my company.
  
  4) The ecommerce websites that show up in your paid listings when a search is done using my trademark do not have permission to use my trademark.
  
  5) You are using my registered trademark in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution or advertising of goods or services.

Hope this information is useful!

Congratulations! The SE Gods certainly smiled on you this time.

Did Yahoo provide any explanation as to how/why the other listings were being selected for presentation?

[blitzen]

Originally Posted by deepsand

Congratulations! The SE Gods certainly smiled on you this time.

Did Yahoo provide any explanation as to how/why the other listings were being selected for presentation?

The only explanations given went something like this,
"You can control what the results on a search will be." and
"Search engines are algorithms...." and I stop them before they're finished to tell them it's baloney: I'm a programmer and know full well that this can be programmed out.

I haven't had their official response to the C&D but noticed the difference on the search.

I also got eBay to remove a username that was my registered trademark. It took two attempts.

They want you to fill out a simple form. The form doesn't give enough room for all the formalities. They denied my claim. It was stupid because some "customer service" guy replied to my claim via email. He had no last name and there was no indication that he was from the legal department. I asked for his full name and his position, after all this was a legal matter. I got no further information from him. He apparently doesn't understand trademark law.

I then sent a certified C&D to which they paid attention. My reasons for the C&D in this case were

1) You are using my trademark in a commerce setting without my consent.

2) This use of "gardecor" as a user ID could cause your readers to think that your user is in some way sponsored by my company or that my company supports the user's activities. [consumer confusion]

3) The information on your website about the user with my trademark is misleading because anyone reading about this user on your website can believe that the information is about my company. This can potentially damage my company's image and reputation.

4) We don't want our clients thinking that my company purchases at eBay.com. This also could damage our image, reputation and reduce sales.

5) On your pages, you're using my registered trademark in an incorrect manner, lowercase without the "®". This weakens our registered trademark rights.

Hopefully I can get back to concentrating on SEO now that these matters are under control for now.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by blitzen

<snip>
I also got eBay to remove a username that was my registered trademark. It took two attempts.

They want you to fill out a simple form. The form doesn't give enough room for all the formalities. They denied my claim. It was stupid because some "customer service" guy replied to my claim via email. He had no last name and there was no indication that he was from the legal department. I asked for his full name and his position, after all this was a legal matter. I got no further information from him. He apparently doesn't understand trademark law.

I had the same problem with eBay re. a client's name deliberately being used by an eBay user. After several month's of attempting to get a response for eBay, and even after sending eBay a PDF copy of the client's Registration of the name, eBay declined to take any action, claiming that they "lacked authority" for such.

Rather than waste even more time with them, I had my client's lawyer send a letter to the imposter threatening him with legal action if he did not cease & desist from using the name in question, or any similar name. That got the job done.

[blitzen]

Yea - my attorney told me to deal directly with the user, but eBay took care of it. Funny, after sending eBay the formal letter with copies of the eBay pages, they still wanted that silly little form filled out and faxed to them - again!

Glad you got it resolved.

[meinking22]

The new Yahoo Search Marketing is just a pile on so many levels. Some of the detracting factors mentioned in this thread are just a tip of the iceberg. I finally pulled the plug on it yesterday and we're talking 40+ PPC clients. My main gripe is the total lack of transparency. Some of you have alluded to the partner sites (who are they specifically? a new one pops up each day), but that is just the beginning.

I've been in an email roundabout with Yahoo for the last 2 weeks and every solution they seem to come up with puts the fault on me. The right match type isn't selected, no keywords are excluded, blah, blah, blah...

The worst is this new quality indicator. Even under standard match Yahoo was listing my ads under too broad or just plain wrong keyword phrases. I was puzzled to see an overall click through rate of 4% for client ads a couple weeks ago on the same campaigns that are getting whopping rates of 25-40% click through on Adwords. For the most part, they are the same campaigns and I even sent Yahoo the spreadsheets to prove it.

When I investigated the matter I quickly discovered the errant keyword click through results and the piss poor matching of phrases. Of course, when I raised the issue to Yahoo, it took several days to get an email response, and they blamed me of course for not excluding words.

So the click through is in the crapper, which makes the ad look ineffective, thus lowering the quality score, impeding the campaigns that much more because the ads won't rank as high as they should, all because Yahoo is matching the ads to the wrong keyword searches, and its all because of user error. Figure that one out...

Steve

[furniture]

Yahoo is a great company. It is so great that sometimes it can't handle all minor questions of some single clients. This is a marketing mistake. The unhappy client can make complains everywhere he goes and this is how bad publicity is formed.

[SemAdvance]

I would have to say that Yahoo does very well in helping my clients make sales. But often it is not the client who makes it work, the client is often not able to wear all the hats needed to make their business a success.

I think what happens is people who are not inclined to understand advertising, try to make themselves an advertiser, and because they do not understand the complexities of advertising and even more antagonizing at times, internet advertising, and as such make disparaging remarks.

There is no reason that Yahoo should have to mimic Google in any way shape or form. Msn has it's own advertising system as does Ask. Where in the heck could you find fraud in that?
Also fraud is one of the hardest cases to bring to court.

What would be better is to try to understand the nature of the beast and how it can and cannot work for you. Yahoo is a portal. Most hospitals have their computers set to Yahoos home page. People hang out on Yahoo for 30 minutes on average.

In retrospect people hang out on Google for 4 minutes and it is why now the Google Universal algorithm directs people to other Google locations or operations (read images, youtube.

So as you can see Google wants to become Yahoo...

Anyway being a portal it is quite easy for Yahoo to direct people looking to buy things, to e-commerce retailers who can meet their needs. Yahoo is especially good at this with business who have products to sale in the $20.00 to $100.00 range

I had a client in the past pulling down $300,000.00 per year with a Yahoo store selling suntanning lotions.

Yahoo also has sessions in various locations where they teach search marketing using their platform and many mom & pop type business report success after attending the training so you may want to look into this as well.

Peace!

[lcoughey]

The only thing I found with the Yahoo! ads is that they eat up my money really fast and don't have any results to show for it. I gave their new system a test to find that it is just as bad as the old.

Oddly enough, my MSN ads are barely getting any hits and I don't even come close to my daily budget. Of course, I haven't spent as much time working on them as I have with the Google ads, but it does seem odd. All I can conclude is that 90% of the traffic that I'm looking for is using Google.

[duker665]

I gave up on PPC, Google was the only one that gave me any sales at all, and it was limited. Kanoodle was total fraud....

[braver55b]

I have a $50 Yahoo coupon I'm about to use to set up a ppc campaign with and this is very disturbing news because with google I routinely opt out of the content network as there are many junk sites built to attract clicks, which in my opinion, tend to be tire kicker or fraudulent.

I think I really want to call them to clarify this a little more.


"Google is the king of the world" at least in terms of the ppc model.

With policies like this Yahoo will never regain its dominance of its former overture model.

[Dinghus]

Yahoo still has problems but has improved with the latest release. At least when I complained this time about going over my daily limit they refunded the money after trying to say I was at fault. What I had done was forgotten to "opt out" of the content match and it had a default of my daily limit. BUT I went back in like 2 minutes later and opted out (and just to be sure set a bid of 10 cents) but it STILL went to triple my daily limit. WOW!
They said that I had set my limit for content match at 1 limit then much later had changed it. This gave the "partner sites" time to run it up before they (Yahoo) could stop it.

Like I said tho, they DID refund me the money.