I lost 2 high traffic terms in Overture

The great Overture search term deletion fun has begun

[TomWaits]

I lost #30 and #50 in my top 100 most visited Overture keywords in their recent overzealous purge yesterday. If this is the worst that happens to me, I'll be happy, though.

Anyone else lose terms yet, or get a notice that they will soon lose keywords? Any ideas when they'll stop their review, i.e., what's their 'materiality' threshold - terms that are only on MSN.com in their agreement, or will they go down to little used 2 and 3 words terms, or other ideas?

[tedster]

Hi TomWaits, and welcome to the Webmaster World forums.

I only run 400 words or so over several clients, mostly 2-word phrases. So far no drops, but all the posts I've been reading do have me concerned.

It's funny, a few months back MSN was 'abusing' Overture kws, sending traffic on non-purchased phrases. Now the purchased phrases get hit with limits. What a see-saw.

[minnapple]

So . . . If little used and "cheap" keywords are deleted from the overture database, and any searches performed on these "cheap" keywords are redirected to a keyword that carries a greater cost to the advertisers and at greater return to the partners . . .

It will lower the overall value of PPC. Hopefully they will not over do it and plant themselves next to the banner ad tombstone in the internet advertising graveyard.

[wolfy]

I had a "bad experience" with Overture new way of listing, I tried new search terms and they refused them because they are terms with no suffient searches. It sounds really stupid doesn't it?

bye
wolfy

[markd]

Sorry to slow on the uptake Guy's, but does this mean that Overture are now refusing certain keywords which are deemed 'unpopular' (ie. targeted and niche) and/or directing this kind of keyword search to a more 'used and popular' phrase and page?

I am sure I have missed the thread which gives the low-down on this incredible situation!

[TomWaits]

Actually, I'm not talking about new terms being refused. I'm talking about old terms that were accepted a couple of years ago, and now they're reviewing them and pulling some of them from advertisers sites using new arbitrary standards.

With that in mind, has anyone else had previously accepted terms, from a long time ago, get yanked from their account? And if you have or haven't, do you know when & where they'll stop?

[wolfy]

There was an open thread about Overture listings revision :

[webmasterworld.com...]

Have a look there.

Wolfy

[TomWaits]

Yup, I saw that before. That thread is where people were just offering general opinions last month. I'm looking for facts. Not one other person was notified last week that they're losing terms that they've had in their accounts awhile?

[adamxcl]

They just got MSN to 2003. If they renew the biggest deals long term, they may relax their uptight attitude a bit.

I'm sure this whole thing started with the big contracts. If there wasn't some pressure on them, I really doubt Overture would turn away money. They are going for money by redirecting terms to more popular terms and eliminating terms with insufficient volume. They want the big bucks for the big terms.

I spent about $15K with them last year but am waiting to kicked out for some terms that I know are possibly borderline. I've almost always deep linked to the content page, so that's not a problem. But I have some little used terms. Will they kick me off as easily as a really low spender? Or what is a high spender versus low spender? And how are they reviewing terms...some may be using "active" listings? What if your account is offline when they review that term? Is it possible to be missed?

Keeps it interesting.