GoTo bids NOT showing up on Altavista

AV does not show all Goto bids

[pobeirne]

I have just searched for my top terms at Altavista.com and only THREE are showing the green "sponsored links". Here are the terms and the AV word count from the bottom of the page:

word count: euro: 22919508
word count: the euro: 396364
word count: european community: 206577

Here are the terms that I bid on at GoTo but still show NO sponsored listings.

word count: eu: 7358068
word count: clipper: 321477
word count: european currency: 32780
word count: euro symbol: 37094
word count: euro dollar: 11736
word count: sme: 559881
word count: european monetary union: about 30000
word count: psp: 568393

GoTo just say that Av is fully supported.

And by the way, that's altavista.com. All the national AVs (.ca, .co.uk, .ie etc) show NO sponsored listings at all.

Patrick
<no signature urls, please -rcj>

Edited by: rcjordan

[msgraph]

We have the same problem. Goto is not adding all of their paid listings in Altavista.

Did you receive a letter like this?

Dear GoTo Client,

We recently signed an agreement to become the exclusive Pay-for-Performance™
search provider for AltaVista Company.

We're writing to let you know that our new agreement with AltaVista will
not apply to all of our advertisers. Because our listings will appear
on AltaVista.com, we must abide by that company's advertising guidelines
and policies.

At this time your site will be excluded from GoTo's search results on
AltaVista.com. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
As a GoTo advertiser you will still receive high-volume quality traffic from our other affiliate agreements. We will continue to look for opportunities to provide all of our advertisers with targeted traffic.

If you have additional questions regarding this agreement please contact
us for further details.

[seoboy]

as alluded to here... [webmasterworld.com...]
...it is my understanding that AV is excluding listings from GoTo where they have a prearranged content partnership with an advertiser.

in otherwords, they are "rewarding" current partners by giving them "exclusive" visibility for certain searches, rather than forcing them to compete with PPC listings.

if you were advertising with AV prior to this GoTo arrangement, you'd be ticked that suddenly there was a new opportunity for your competitors to fight with you for real estate.

i think this is the lesson AV learned the first time around - if they run PPC listings ALONG WITH prearranged partnership deals, the partners get VERY ANGRY with them. to avoid this, they make it an either or - either they show PPC or they show exclusive partnership deals. this also puts a value added on their partnership deals - because its further proof of the "exclusive" treatment that their partners receive...

i think they are one step ahead of everyone else with this approach.... i think others will do the same down the road, as per the "paid sponsorship" model i spoke of in the thread above...

having said that, i have no idea whether or not there is a "euro" sponsor. there may be, or it may be a true problem with the listings.... but, in general, i'm pretty sure the scenario i've outlined above explains the lay of the land at AV

[sig removed]

Edited by: Mike_Mackin

[pobeirne]

Thanks for those comments re AV partners.

GoTo told me they have a list of terms that AV will not accept (I presume they meant porn), and mine were not among them.

I'll follow up, but I'm not getting much idea as to whether this is AV being selective about taking or GoTo being selective about providing.

[sig & url removed]