Yahoo Search Marketing has taken a lot of flack (many of it deservedly) over the past couple months for the API and DTC being down routinely.

It’s become such as issue that many have forgotten that there are those users who prefer YSM to AdWords. Thought I’d toss a list together of why some people really enjoy using YSM over AdWords. (Personally, I like them both, I think of them as different – not better or worse)

1. Advanced match is much more predictable than expanded broad match.
2. You can see your position.
3. You can bid to position.
4. You know what you’re paying per click (no odd formula you have to reverse engineer).
5. You can see average bids for keywords.
6. Keyword suggestion tool has counts.
7. Bid tool shows what everyone is bidding.
8. Your account is off or on – if your bids are highlighted in bold, then your account is currently online.
9. The ‘easy track’ feature makes it easy for a tracking system to grab variables.
10. The API doesn’t have a query limit.
11. It’s very easy to reorganize an account.
12. Separate bids for content vs search.
13. The ability to use a separate title/description for every keyword (especially when you’re in the 10k range) – try making an AdWords account with 10k AdGroups.
14. Reps usually answer the phone.
15. Reps often call back within an hour (and often minutes) if they were on the phone when you called.
16. Multiple reps (many agencies work with a ‘team’ so if one rep is busy, you have a team leader, backup reps, and horizontal members).
17. I can get someone on the phone in minutes for API support.
18. Overture will give click and billing estimate proposals for new clients.
19. ‘Bounties’ or ‘Affiliate bonuses’ for opening new accounts.
20. Have local PPC distribution which doesn’t require a website.

Overture local advantages:
No need to choose geographic keywords
Overture leverages user data for searches
No minimum budget (precision match is $20/month)
No website required

Overture local disadvantages:
Must use business name as ad title
One ad per account, no matter how many keywords
Bid placement for positions other than #1 are about impossible to predict (no bid tool for local)
local.yahoo.com is currently showing more national ads than local
yahoo.com is showing more local ads than national for local based queries

The concept of overture local is good, and since there’s no minimum budget, it’s worth trying out. However, if you want to advertise on across the Yahoo network, precision match accounts with geographic keywords can be much easier to work with.

Overture announced today that it will re-brand itself as Yahoo Search Marketing.

This is the second attempt for the grandfather of PPC engines to re-brand itself, having done so from GoTo.com to Overture a few years ago.

It looks like the official change will coincide with a Webmaster World search conference. Expect to see a nice party to annouce the change.

To create an excel based backup of all your ads and listings, do the following:

1. Login into your overture account.
2. Click on manage bids.
3. At the category level, make sure ‘all listings’ is the selected category.
4. Click the download button.
This will save an external excel file of all your listings.

We all knew that the DTC was going to be down, and that new features were coming.
There is now a daily budget feature under accounting. It lets you specify how much to budget per day (however, I don’t see any details under their help for exactly how it’ll work – if it’ll be nonstop until the budget is hit, or space out the impressions like AdWords). The default ‘auto credit charge’ is a full month’s budget. So, you might want to make sure that you’re not being charged 10k at a time, but rather a number you’re comfortable with.

The new advanced match system is now in place where you can choose either standard or advanced match. As before, there are some words that it won’t let you switch the matching option (I’ve got both 1 word and 3-4 word phrases that it won’t let me change).

However, some of those words that aren’t changed when you change more than one at once, or change an entire category’s match level, will let you change the match options if you just select that specific word and try to change its match option. (Odds are, there is a bug at the category or keyword level that will later be changed.)

As previously noted, you can now have 45 negative keywords.

If you use Overture conversion stats, the stats previous to 10/2 aren’t showing up in the ‘Manage precision match’ area, however, you can still run reports which contain this data.

Advanced match works differently than broad match.
The system analyzes the entire query.
It checks for standard matches.
It then checks the advanced matches.

Standard matches are shown first.
Advanced matches are run through filters.

An advanced match must have everyword in the query – it doesn’t broad match similar keywords like Google where ‘ring’ can be matched to ‘jewelry’. It does use stemming matches though.
See: http://www.content.overture.com/d/AUm/ac/ba/mt_int.jhtml

It then has another algo that determines if the searched for query is close enough to the advanced matches to show. In a lot of cases, ‘junk keywords’ can’t be matched to anything – so no matches are shown.

Now, the above is more sophisticated than it sounds.
A search for ‘red widget Alaska asdfe’ will usually show an ad for ‘red widget Alaska’ as 3 out of 4 words are identical.

The search for ‘widget asdfead’ most likely won’t show anything as half the words aren’t matched to anything.

Advanced match is good to use to pick up phrases like ‘buy a red widget’, ‘buying red widgets’, ‘finding pink & red widgets’ etc.

Geo based keywords stop a lot of advanced matches. Overture has worked hard on ‘Overture Local’, and many geo qualified terms stop advanced matches unless the geo term is included in the phrase. This isn’t true for many product searches (like wedding gift), but it is true for many local services, like ‘dentist’.

However, their geo terms aren’t perfect yet. A search for ‘Juneau Alaska dentist office’ brings up 0 results, where a search for ‘Alaska dentist office’, brings up a pageful (and some have the keyword phrase ‘Alaska dentist’), so the system should be showing the ad for ‘Alaska dentist’ in that search – but it’s not for some reason.

I think we’ll see advanced match showing more impressions over time. Not because of increased search volume, but because the system will start to better target geo qualified terms and understand longer product based phrases (i.e. buying a wedding gift in Chicago)

If you use phrase or broad matching options, you should make some use of the Overture PPC negative matching options.
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Similar to Google’s original broad match (not expanded broad match), Overture has introduced a new matching option that will help advertisers reach more audience members.

It is suppose to be a ‘back-fill’ sort of match, where exact matches will show first, and then advanced match options will be filled in afterward (i.e. if you bid $1.00 on widgets, and someone else bids ‘$0.50 on ‘blue widgets’ the ‘blue widget’ bid will have a higher placement regardless of the bid).

However, in the past when we’ve seen new features introduced by anyone where there is money left on the table, in the future this type of pricing option is changed to highest bidder. Only time will tell how this matching option stacks up over history.

Overture has introduced a new product, the Overture search optimizer. Looks interesting, however, it’ll probably be mostly available for large spenders and small businesses will be left using other tools. Press Release.

Overture is launching a new product, Overture Local.

Overture Local seems a strong response to Google AdWords’ geo-targeting campaign options.

It will use user entered and user registered data to determine search based locations.

One of the interesting features in these accounts is the lack of need for a website. The result page shows in a frame with the business information at the top of the page and the actual website (if there is one) at the bottom of the page.

This is one of the first PPC forays into bringing local businesses onto the web with a ‘no website’ requirement. In the past, these types of listings have been mostly regulated to the Internet Yellow Pages. This is a great move that should benefit many local businesses.