CogBlog

Yahoo Search Marketing looks like they are moving ever so slightly away from Match Driver.

"To give advertisers more control over their ads, we plan to remove a limited number of keyword mappings on July 29, 2008. "

Match Driver is their system for matching synonyms and plurals of certain phrases together into one bidding group. For instance, if you wanted to bid on the keyword "timeclock" and "time clocks" on YSM, they are lumped together by Match Driver. The system was first introduced by Overture way back in 2002 with the claim that it would help advertisers drive more traffic--by forcing them to bid on synonyms that they may not have wanted in the first place.

The problem with Match Driver is that it has always been a little bit of a black box. Instead of having the ability to choose an easily understood match type like "exact match" (where your ad will only be triggered by a search for exactly your defined key word/phrase) the best you can do with Yahoo is to use their "Standard" match --which will still be matched to multiple phrases through match driver.

This causes all kinds of issues when managing keyword sets across multiple networks as well. For instance, say you have a set of five phrases in Google Adwords, each with their own destination URL, match type, and bid. If you take these phrases and import them into the YSM system they will only accept one of them, and reject the others as duplicates. The one version they accept will be the the one you submitted first, so now you'll be targeting all five phrases with the bid, and destination URL intended for just one. And, since you didn't know their match list prior to submission, it is quite difficult to know precisely which of your submissions will be the accepted version.

You can look at their list of unmapped phrases here:
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/developer/index.php

What strikes me about the list is that they are not so much unmapping phrases, as mapping them to a new cononicalized version. For instance, they are taking this set of phrases :

history and automobile
history and of and the and automobile
history automobile
history of an automobile
history of automobile
history of the automobile
history on automobile
history on the automobile

and matching them to the phrase "automobile history" instead of "car history". Not a huge change in my opinion.

When you search Yahoo for "automobile history" and "history of the automobile", you'll get the same set of advertisers -- many of whom are selling used car history reports. So, is it in these advertiser's best interests to force them to use the same bid, ad copy, and destination URL for those two searches? Certainly "history of the automobile" converts at a much, much lower rate. And, notice that on AdWords, where advertisers have more control, those advertisers avoid "history of the automobile", while they do appear for the search "automobile history.

Rather than tweak Match Driver, I've got a much better idea. Get rid of it.

Here's an interesting site for you word lovers out there. Word Spy is devoted to :

"lexpionage, the sleuthing of new words and phrases. These aren't "stunt words" or "sniglets," but new terms that have appeared multiple times in newspapers, magazines, books, Web sites, and other recorded sources."

Here's one that I've experienced myself at times:

semisomnia n. Mild but chronic exhaustion caused by poor sleep habits.

More here: Word Spy

One interesting site mentioned in this morning's keynote was SearchMe.com. They are taking the same kind of idea that I've seen before--giving you a preview of the sites that appear in a search box--but to a whole new level. Rather than a small little badge preview, they show the search results in categories of Apple Cover-Flow style result sets.

Pretty cool, and something I think I'll actually use.

This is backed by Sequoia Capital, who've previously been involved with little web companies like Google, YouTube, Yahoo.

As a side note, one of the first speakers we saw after starting COGBOX in 1997 was Mark Kvamme, now one of the partners of Sequoia. This was at an AIGA brand design conference, and really got us excited about our new business. Our paths have remained almost eerily synchronous ever since. He went on to fund Google, we...ok, maybe not perfectly synchronous.

We're now dominating the market for the phrase Xanadaculous! The one and only top position:

Occasionally we're asked our opinion of certain marketing companies out there who seem to make fantastic claims for incredibly low prices. Claims like "guaranteed top search positions" for a low low price. Two questions that come to mind are :

Top positions for what phrases?
Generally achieving top positions for obscure terms is pretty straight-forward. Most site owners probably have a number of top positions right now for some combination of words and phrases that appear on their site right now. Of course, what matters is whether anyone else actually uses those phrases in search.

Top positions on what sites?
Google, MSN/Live, Yahoo. Those are the sites that matter. And if you do well there, you'll do well everywhere else. So that claim (that I fortunately do hear less often these days) that we'll submit your sites to 50, 100, or 1,000 of the top sites, just doesn't hold any water. You don't need to do it.

So, in honor of these shady sites I'm coining a new term : Xanadaculous. Xanadaculous means a spectacular claim that is both mythical (like Xanadu in the movie by the same name) and awful (also like the movie). Amazingly enough, google currently finds no results for the term Xanadaculous.



#1 position, coming right up.

Labels: xanadaculous

This afternoon I decided to take a trip down memory lane. For me, that means cleaning my desk.

Tucked into the nooks and crannies I found all kinds of little reminders of past projects and people we've worked with. I also found that the little mouse we found in our office last year apparently had a vacation home in the back of drawer #2 (we eventually caught the little fellow with this trick).

So, should I clean my desk more often? Is that what I've learned in 10 years. No. It isn't.

What prompted this post is a 3.5" diskette I found at the very very back that contained the very top industry knowledge on the topic of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)...from 1997.

Back then there was a group called Planet Ocean Communications that produced a guide to "winning the search engine wars". I found an august 1997 copy (their 2nd I believe) sitting there on the disk in the back of my desk drawer. It was full of recommendations and methods/tricks that would help you climb to the top of the search engines. And, this stuff really worked. I still remember the day we reached #2 for web design on InfoSeek. INFOSEEK people!

Now, while a lot of their recommendations from back then would be real bad ideas today, their top recommendation is still one of the best SEO recommendations out there. It is:

Have a unique descriptive title tag on every page!
It is amazing how many sites still don't do this. For ten years just about anyone who's even dipped a toe into search optimization realizes that the title of your page is very important. If every page of your site says the same thing in the title (you'll see the title at the top of your browser window)... then change it! Right away.

So that was their top recommendation 10 years ago--and guess what the top recommendation is amongst SEO experts today? What single thing to they most agree on? Yes! Have a title containing your keywords.

The secret is out. Update your title tags. Now, I have to get back to cleaning my desk before I catch a case of hantavirus.

A month ago I asked Yahoo! for three wishes that would make my life working with them so much easier.

One month later, a wish has been granted. I have to give them props for granting me my wish to opt-out of certain partners.

Guess what Blurit.com? Gravy train is over!


Yahoo must be getting serious, someone from their agency services team actually pro-actively called us the other day. I don't think that has happened in a while. Said they are going to improve their service. I hope they do. I'd like to see Yahoo! start to actually compete with AdWords.

See you there next week. I'm looking forward to a lot of back-to-back sessions filled with practical real-world details.

I'll let you know how it goes.