This is Huge

3 and 4 word keywords are basically going away

[Opportune Moment]

So today I saw clicks from a term I do not technically have in my Overture account. I received 4 clicks from "advertising on the internet" that people typed in that matched to the term "internet advertising" that I was actually bidding on.

I called them up and said oh yeah "advertising on the internet" is the same term as "internet advertising". You cannot have both, you can only have the more expensive one because that's how we make the most money. They are getting rid of the good 3 and 4 word search phrases that cost 18/19cents and allowing you to only bid on the more expensive keywords. Great news. We're all doomed :)

[hobbnet]

Are you sure this isn't just Broad Match in action?

[Tropical Island]

More likely their infamous Word Match which comes into play before the new phrase and broad match.

[Opportune Moment]

They specifically said they are taking steps to reduce the number of words advertisers have to 'find on their own' and manage in their account. What this does to us is reduce the number of keywords (especially the affordable one's) and makes the supply and demand for keywords more competitive...and we know what happens then. The terms grow even more expensive.

[redzone]

This is "MatchDriver" in action, and the example that Opportune_Moment gave, has been in place for months.

Stop words such as : on, in, for, and, &

have been "MatchDriven" to broader terms, just as term reversals on 2 and 3 word terms:

Dallas Homes - Homes Dallas
New Dallas Homes - Homes Dallas New

The largest outcry from the advertisers came when Overture signifigantly increased their MatchDrive dictionary, mapping thousands of mis-spellings to the correctly spelled words..

This is where the real "cheap" traffic used to be...