Changes to Overture Local Match

Adding Search Phrase to Listing

[stuntdubl]

I received an e-mail from Overture this morning stating that Overture Local Match will now insert searched terms into the title of an advertisement to help increase click through rate.

To me this seems like a pretty poor idea as despite the overall research that shows that having the phrase in the title improves CTR, this could likely make an ad sound foolish and decrease CTR. To me, this sounds like a band-aid fix, and not something I'm real excited about. Just one more disappointing feature of Local Match. How about dynamic keyword insertion code instead?

Anyone else get this mail and have any thoughts on it?

[Chicago]

Yea, that is a strange way to handle what should be opt-in dynamic title insertions.

This is their example:
Local Match advertiser: Joes Sporting Goods
User's search request: Golf balls
Advertiser's new title with keyword enhancement: Joe's Sporting Goods: Golf balls

An even more significant *enhancement* may be this:

Website Displayed with your Locator Page
"If you have a website and provided a URL when creating your listings, the Local Match Locator Page will begin displaying your website along with your business information and map."

The key word here is *along* - they showed me an example of this and I like it. It provides the benefits of the locator page along with your web site in a single view. Many of us had been previously frustrated with the inability to show a client's web site for overture local match.