Location3 - 3:13 pm on Apr 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

Ben, your article is perfect timing, as we have seen some erratic activity on some of the keywords we are bidding on. There are days when we have spent $200 on a specific keyword, and then the next day at the same position it shot up to $750. We are not talking about the top 3 positions, which are getting syndicated out further to their main partners; we are showing this on low positions on the first page results. Fradulent activity is happening like made right now, and I feel Yahoo is losing control.

We have brought this issue to Yahoo, and they are starting to credit us the clicks, but the problem is they are only taking one case at a time, and its delaying our 2 other cases, which has slowed down our spend due to not knowing if we are going to get refunded or not. They are taking 10 business days for each case, and this is absolute nightmare.

I did kind of having a feeling these issues would eventually happen as I noticed the different refers increasing on Yahoo Search Syndication. Last summer, I had 3 calls from different companies looking to syndicate out the Yahoo Search Feed, and tried to sell me on the fact that they get a better revenue share due to the volume they can do. I realized then Yahoo could not be monitoring these actions, and the repercussions are starting to happen.