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I've seen a drop in 'quality' since exactly the 1st of October as reported by Overture, however, my own stats tell a differet story. Something changed in their conversion tracking at the beginning of October, but my own tracking tells me conversions are still steady.
Other than that, 10% of my Overture traffic is coming from IPs outside of the U.S/Canada, not sure if this was the same prior to October though. It was change in Overture tracking that made me investigate.
It was only Overture, not Google or organic traffic.
Syndication partners like MSN, and CNN have always been good sources of traffic for me, but it seems like Overture has been reaching out to more shady distribution partners, whose primary source of traffic/marketing is click arbitrage from Miva, and Kanoodle.
I decreased my ad spend in Overture 50% during October. The conversion rate hit the floor. The only explanation I can offer up is that I'm seeing a lot more UNQUALIFIED feed partners.
Syndication partners like MSN, and CNN have always been good sources of traffic for me, but it seems like Overture has been reaching out to more shady distribution partners, whose primary source of traffic/marketing is click arbitrage from Miva, and Kanoodle.
This is something I suspect as well. MSN is slowly drifting away but Overture somehow manages to supply increased traffic!
I've also noticed Overture's traffic out of line with traffic trends. When you can guess within a few percent what Adwords is going to supply you on a given day, Overture seems completely random on their traffic patterns. On a day when I expect low traffic (towards the end of the week and weekend for me), suddenly I get a traffic jump that beats mid week!
It all smells of bad partner networks to me.
I was wondering if someone from Yahoo! could throw some light on what's going on.
I registered my application a couple of weeks ago, but I'll bet others got onboard much sooner.
Moneymoneymoneymoney for Yahoo.
If you pay anywhere around $5 per click be very careful and or if you bid of very popular keywords. I found that if it’s not so popular keywords and still around the $6 they are not abused, not yet anyway I am sure that will change soon.
I talked to Yahoo today and they say that this is the “Yahoo Search Network”, I asked for our site to show only on Yahoo and MSN only; they say it’s a package deal unlike Google where you can select the “Google Search” where you are displayed on Google, Ask and AOL only. With Yahoo you are on all over their network.
Too bad, I really used to like Yahoo and Overture but I guess that’s the end of that. Google here I come…
Are you that desperate Yahoo?
I've posted a support request asking what happened around the 1st of October. If no valid answer is given, I'm pulling my budget. At least until I can setup some decent tracking, instead of the random figures their in house tracking conjures up.
last month i spent nearly $10,000 and ROI was more than double.
it doesn't really matter where the traffic comes from as long as you are targeting the right country/audience. in reality, if the person reads your ads and like what they see, they will visit and either take the offer or look away if what they see sucks.. who's fault is it that they didn't like what they saw?
i've taken a loss before i saw any ROI.. can't spend $10 bucks and expect to make $100 right away.
Oh really? ever used FindWhat or any of the other 2nd tier engines? Ever heard about click fraud? its not pretty.
I can asure you if you start to see more referals from other web sites then Yahoo and MSN, like 4 to 1. 4 from the other sites and 1 from Yahoo or MSN then your ROI will start to go down and you are not going to like it.
As long as most of your referals are from Yahoo or MSN you are fine but if you ROI start to deep look at your referals
I have been checking referals and a lot of my traffic now comes from AdSense farmer type sites (i.e. sites designed with no other purpose than generating AdSense clicks). I was surprised to see these in Yahoo.
Overall, with term amalgamation and this stuff, plus the operational overhead of dealing with Overture/Yahoo, I am tempted on smaller budgets to spend it all on the other guys.
it doesn't really matter where the traffic comes from as long as you are targeting the right country/audience
Are we using the same Overture? Tell me how you target specific coutries because the last time I checked with support, not many of their partners use geo-targeting. At least 10% of my clicks from Overture come from outside the US and Canada.
You spent $10,000 last month. Tell me what you would do if that jumped to $20,000 but your sales remained unchanged? Are we on the same wavelength now?
No, unlike Google where you can opt out of Adsense. Yahoo consider anybody that are willing to display their results as part of the "Yahoo Network" and you have to take them all.
Averaged the months of June, July, August and September. (Busy season)
Averaged the months of October and November to date. (Much less busy)
CPC decreased 18%, conversion rate has not really changed and average order size is up 41%.
Needless to say, we've not seen the problems that you guys are seeing. Yahoo is remarkably consistent.
I lower my bids so its fine now or lets say much better
I could not agree more...
Yahoo?
I reported to Yahoo/Overture last week that they were billing me for more clicks than the reported visits from my web logs. On Oct 4th alone, my account was refilled 3 times that day and there was no corresponding increase in site traffic.
I've been with Overture since back when it was goto.com and I bought all my clicks for a penny. Articles I read back then scoffed at ppc saying it was absurd that people would pay for visits to their website. My how things have changed.
I turned off my Yahoo ppc account completely until I get an answer from them as to why my billed clicks have skyrocketed and how I can be billed for more clicks than my site had visitors. Plus, as others have noted, most of my visits now come from sites that do nothing but aggregate search listings. The visitors staying less than 30 seconds has increased from about 50% a year ago to 72% currently, and the home page is substantially the same content and appearance.
What's going on?
Let's hope they fix this soon and the conversion data is not lost.
Well they haven't bothered for the past 8 weeks so I wouldn't hold your breath.
They've known of this for how long and they've only just thought it would be a good idea to contact their advertisers! 'Urgency' is obviously not a word in the Yahoo dictionary.
What about people that don't track sales with third party tracking? They see bad conversion rates and without an explaination for it, they will stop investing. Has this not crossed anyone's mind at Y?
We did some serious budget shifting because of this. Google likes it though :)
