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Latest update to the Google AdWords vs. Yahoo! Search Marketing post…

Today, with the assistance of David Lee in the Yahoo! Platinum Support department - Yahoo! applied the Bulk Spreadsheet, implementing the new account reorganization. Thanks to David for staying on top of things - we really appreciated it!

Final comments on the bulk spreadsheet method of reorganizing a PPC account. It is just too cumbersome a method, and leaves too many opportunities for errors to occur in the process. An “Adwords Editor-esque” tool from Yahoo! Search Marketing sure would go a long way towards improving the speed with which massive changes to an account are made… on both sides of the fence.

In our opinion, Google’s AdWords Editor method wins hands down, no contest.

Search engines are specialized web sites designed to help users find information on the World Wide Web. Search engines use various criteria or “algorithms” to rank web pages according to their relevance to search words or phrases, a.k.a. “keywords.” Most engines have their own algorithms and indexes of web pages; as a result, different engines can return entirely different results for searches of the same keywords.

Perhaps the most well-known search engine is Google, which has millions of pages in its frequently-updated index. Google’s popularity is due in part to its integration as a “search bar” in many web browsers, making it the default engine of choice for many users who may not realize that other search engines exist. However, as the Web is made up of millions upon millions of web pages with more added each day, no single search engine can index all of them. Accordingly, the use of different engines may be helpful for locating certain types of information.

Yahoo is another major search engine, and was probably the most popular engine of all a few years ago before Google’s rise to fame. Yahoo, like Google, contains a massive updated index of general search results covering much of the diverse content available on the internet and remains a valuable online resource.

Some other general search engines are Microsoft’s MSN, Ask.com, LookSmart, AltaVista, Excite, Lycos, WiseNut, Clusty, Gigablast, and Exalead, just to name a few.

There are also engines which will search multiple other engines and simultaneously compile all the results into a single list. Both MetaCrawler and Dogpile return search listings from Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com.

In addition to general search engines, there are many engines designed for locating specific types of content.

Some search engines filter out inappropriate content for children, allowing for family-friendly searches and homework help. Examples are Ask for Kids, Fact Monster, KidsClick, Yahoo Kids, and Family Source.

Employment seekers can look for job-related information on Monster or CareerBuilder.

Bargain hunters can search for great deals on all kinds of products at BizRate, PriceGrabber, Shopping.com or Froogle. Each allows for comparison of prices from many different sources.

When vacation time rolls around, Priceline, Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia can assist in finding great deals on travel and hotels by searching multiple airline, car rental and hotel sites.

With so many engines to serve as your guides, in no time at all you can navigate your way to the information you want and need on the vast World Wide Web.

As promised, here is an update to the Google AdWords vs. Yahoo! Search Marketing post in which we have compared our experience of making a complete account structure change between the two PPC search engines.

After touching base with Yahoo! Platinum Support we were able to get them a copy of the bulk spreadsheet and confirm that they were able to open/view the document.

A customer support representative contacted us later in the day to confirm that the bulk spreadsheet was just a reorganization of the existing keywords. After confirming that was the case, and that there were no new keywords - they indicated that it would be reviewed and “passed on”. They were reluctant to provide any kind of ETA for implementation, only saying that they would contact us tomorrow with the status.

Stay tuned….

Recently we’ve had the necessity to restructure several client keyword accounts in two of the PPC engines who are “major” players.

As anyone who is currently involved in PPC marketing knows by now… Yahoo! has completely revamped their PPC offering to advertisers - code named “Panama”.

Yahoo!’s new PPC system is very similar to the way that Google handles it’s AdWords service. Relevancy, determined according to each PPC engine’s algorithms, is now a factor in both how high you appear in the rankings and how much you pay for that click.

But what isn’t similar is the way that each company allows you to interface with their PPC system. During the course of reorganizing these accounts we have found some very distinct difference between dealing with these two companies.

Aside from customer service response times, relevancy issues, etc. I’d like to point to the available tools provided by both companies for handling massive and/or complete changes to an account. First we’ll look at Google AdWords :

Google AdWords

The offline tool provided by Google is the AdWords Editor. The tool, once installed on your computer, allows you to change bids, add/remove campaigns, adgroups and keywords and review performance of your account.

Adding the new account structure was quick and easy. We generated the new structure into the comma delimited format required. Copied and pasted it into the “add multiple keywords” form within AdWords Editor and hit “Finish”. A minute or so later the new structure was built in the Editor. A few more changes to enter the text ads into each new adgroup and set various preferences within the added campaigns and the whole thing was ready for posting to Google. Posting of the new changes was done within 10 minutes.

It was quite simple, within 3 hours the new campaigns, adgroups and keywords (even new keywords) were active. Wish the same could be said for Yahoo!.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

In order to make a bulk change to your account in Yahoo!; you’ve got to download their CSV format file which is a copy of your account’s campaigns, adgroups, ads and keywords. Make the desired changes - and upload the modified CSV file. After we downloaded and inspected one account’s CSV file it appeared that there were quite a few “holes” in the data, wherein some keywords were missing their unique tracking URLs (odd… in the online interface for the account they appear to be there). We shrugged it off since we were essentially rebuilding the accounts campaigns and ads anyway, we’d fix it as we went along.

Working with a CSV file of this size in Excel is very cumbersome, even if you have a large desktop area - it’s just too many columns to comfortably work with when you are dealing with thousands of rows worth of entries. A very poor way of dealing with the whole account - especially for a restructure/reorg. But we got it done.

When we attempted to upload the CSV file via Yahoo!’s interface it kept being rejected indicating that the format was incorrect. So, we downloaded Yahoo!’s bulk template ensured that our changes fit their format and tried again. Still no luck.

Next step was to open a customer support case and send them the file that way. The next day they responded to us saying that they could not open the file we provided. Baffled again, I sent the file to several people (each using different operating systems) and ALL were able to open the CSV file. So we aren’t real sure what the issue really is at Yahoo!.

Further calls to Yahoo! “Platinum” support this afternoon resulted in a promise of a return call within 20 minutes, but none was received.

This has been our experience - We’ll keep you posted as to what occurs with Yahoo! Search Marketing. In the meantime, we are happily making regular tweaks to the newly reorganized Google AdWords accounts.