Irrelevant search results after update

Overture is making the keywords for me?

[vccubed]

I'm going through my log trying to figure out why my overture account is suddenly empty and I find a references that are the equivalent of this:

?OVRAW=laser%20widget%20no%20widgetmaker&OVKEY=producta%20sacramento&OVMTC=advanced

What is interesting is that it pulled the words "widget no widgetmaker" randomly from one of our ads (they were not contiguous), we don't buy this term since we market widgetmakers... it then served an add for a widgetmaker in a particular city and it cost me over $3.00 for someone who is definately not a customer.

I've never noticed this before but I've been seeing variables of it all day. I've also seen this all day which I don't recall seeing before... I bid for "blue widget" and someone searched for "blue widgets in the movie grease" and it serves my ad? I know Google used to do that, I thought Yahoo was literal.

Anyone know how to get this stuff fixed?

[sem4u]

Is advanced match switched on or is this standard match? If it is advanced you need to switch it off.

It also could be part of the match driver technology introduced quite a few years ago, where keywords searched for that were just in your ad, could cause your ad to be displayed.

Would be helpful to have some feedback from Yahoo! on this one.

[vinnie2227]

According to the URL you've posted, you've got Advanced match activated. You need to turn that off to avoid this.

[OvertureRep]

Vccubed- Sorry to jump in here a little late but wanted to make sure that you know you have a couple options here:

1.Opt these keywords out of Advanced Match (turn it off) at the listing level, since it may not be affecting your whole account.

2. Include “Excluded words” at the listing level or account level. You provided the example, “blue widgets in the movie grease”. So, if you sell “blue widgets” and it has nothing to do with the movie Grease. You may want to include “movie” and “grease” as Excluded words. This can help prevent you from getting displayed under “blue widgets in the movie grease”.

If this doesn’t clear up your issue, please send me sticky mail, and I can have a customer service rep contact you.

YahooSarah

[Tropical Island]

A few weeks ago I had to put the excluded word "mile" for a word under which we advertise because someone reported to me that they found our ad while doing a search for "three mile ....". On checking in Over search sure enough there was our ad.

This word was definitely NOT an advanced search and this phrase has absolutely nothing to do with our business located on an island near South America.

I have a feeling that they have opened the tap in order to compensate for declining searches. I have absolutely no faith in Over / Yahoo's management to do the "right thing" for their advertisers.

When the inevitable MSN loss arrives they will start doing things that will rile people even more than they do now.

We continue to advertise with them for the Yahoo coverage. If they water that down with poor matching and poor partners they will disappear faster than you can say "FindWhat".