After giving  Google some limited praise last week for the additional reporting stats on their partner networks, I thought it only fair that I balance things by showing how it compares at Yahoo.

And, well, it’s not good!

Not only does Yahoo not allow you to see the stats from the search partner network, they don’t even allow you to opt-out of the partner network! Instead you can block up to 250 domains.  Unfortunately the search partners are SO numerous, and SO spammy that it’s like playing whack-a-mole trying to keep up with them.

As we have better and better website analytics reporting all the time, from Google, Webtrends, Omniture and so on,  it becomes easier to judge where best to spend your advertising money.

I’ve been using that PPC engine from GoTo, through Overture, up to the present YSM brand, and while things at Google, and even Microsoft AdCenter, have improved, the quality from Yahoo has dropped significantly.

For example, this is from one of our client’s reports from last month:

As you can see, the top referring domain on one day was Shopica.com, which sent over 4 times as much traffic as Google. What do you mean you’ve never heard of them? They’re 4 times as popular as Google.

Unfortunately, as we couldn’t see a single lead, booking, inquiry or anything as a result of that traffic, we put Shopica on the blocked list. However, it takes Yahoo a while to update, so the next day, we got even more visitors from them. And, even more impressively, all the visitors from them came in a one hour period:

Wow!

No doubt you’ll be surprised to learn that Shopica get a cut of all the ad money that I pay to Yahoo for that traffic.  As does Nexplore, who were the next day’s bonus traffic:

Not as impressive, but considering we’re paying around $1.75/click for some of these terms, not to be sniffed at either.

I spoke to my Yahoo Account Manager, who was very polite and understanding, and agreed it was “junk” but said that there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Oh, and no refund either.

What I don’t understand it why doesn’t Yahoo just let us opt out?

Yes, the reach is far greater with all of these sites in the network, but if the end result is a waste of money, people will just stop advertising.

As we learn more and more about the quality of traffic from different sites, it’s hard to justify spending $10,000+ a month (as this client does) on “junk”.

It’s not that we don’t want to use Yahoo, it’s we don’t want to use Yahoo’s partners. Cut them out and we’ll still spend the same amount – only we’ll get more qualified visitors and Yahoo will get to keep more of the money.

Everybody wins, right?

In the latest round of updates at the end of last week, Google announced that they would (finally!) be adding more detail about where your clicks are coming from:

“Previously, these pages divided statistics into two categories: search, which included Google and search partners, and the content network.
Now, we show one set of statistics for Google and another set aggregating search partner performance. Search partners include AOL, Ask.com, and many other search sites around the web. ”

This is a major change, comparable to when Google started showing where exactly your ads where coming from in the Content network.

That was a huge step forward, and one that made sense for Google. Previously advertisers were skeptical about throwing money down a black hole which included some very, um, shady Made For AdSense sites alongside the high quality sites they may have wanted to target.

However, these latest changes don’t go far enough. Yet.

We can now see how Google stacks up against the other search partners, but not how the individual partners (Ask, AOL, etc) are performing individually. Rich, over at Destilled is asking the question, “Have Google Shot Themselves in the Foot?”, and it’s a valid point.

Here’s the data for one of the accounts we manage:

(I removed the campaign names for anonymity for my client)

As you can see, in each case the cost per click for the search partners is higher, up to 25% higher, than it is on Google, but even more importantly, the number of conversions (final column) are way down. So I’m paying more, and getting less. That is why all the Search partner ads are now set to ‘Off’. I’d rather spend where it is working.

So, what happens now?

Well I suspect that that many others will follow suit and shut off the complete search network, for example, see this thread at Webmaster World:

“At first glance it looks like 90% of my conversions are from google search only not the network.”

“Wow, just split stats on an account. Bye bye Search Network!”

“We totally disabled Partners in a few campaigns after seeing 100 to 200% higher conversion costs.
No wonder they didn’t show this data for so long.”

And if that happens, I’d have to assume that Google will be forced to show the search network in greater details, if only due to pressure from their partners. If AOL is performing well, for instance, they’re unlikely to be happy about being cut out due to the deficiencies of other sites.

However, for now we have to deal with what we have, and I’m at least glad that I’ve been able to learn this much.

How about you? How do your stats measure up across the different sites?

Google announced on Monday that the Quality Score Improvements would be going live this week, with what they claim are tweaks which will benefit both advertisers and search users.

Well, they would, wouldn’t they!?

The changes, removing the ‘Inactive for Search Status’, real time ‘Quality Score’ and new ‘First Page Bid Estimates’ seem to me to be more about generating extra revenue than improving quality.

Even among those SEMs who work with AdWords for a living there is a lot of confusion about what is going on. A lot of the targeting improvements seem, well, arbitrary at best. For instance, here’s one of the search terms from an account I manage (click the image to enlarge):

It’s not ‘Great’, but a fairly solid 7/10 ‘OK’. Even some nice words of encouragement,

“What should I do?
Keep it up! Your keyword, ad text, and landing page quality are high.”

So, how is the ad performing? Let’s see:

Hmm, the ad is not showing. Must be the bid then, right?

Well, no:

Estimated bid to show on the first page:	$1.25	Based on the quality score below
Your bid:	$1.75	Max CPC

I have an keyword that is rated at 7/10, and I’m bidding 40% more than Google estimates I need to to be on the first page, and yet, “No Ad is Showing”.

No wonder people are confused.

If Google is not showing the ads, then they’ll lose money then. Well, I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.

I’ve been watching my keywords pretty closely this week to see what would happen, and Google’s main suggestion seems to be that I raise my bids. Funny that.

How about this one for instance:

That’s an exact match keyword, which fits the site perfectly, has a historically high click-thru rate and used to average less the $1/click. Google now says “Bid is below first page bid estimate of $25.00″. $25! And yet yesterday, it was in the 1.5 average position.

That’s an extreme one, but we’ve seen maybe 30-40% of our keywords being told they should raise the bid according to the first page bid estimate. If that is happening across other peoples’ accounts, and it appears that it is, then we are going to see the average cost of bids being pushed up. Nobody wants to be on the 2nd or, gasp, 3rd page of results.

I’ve been working with Pay Per Click ads for a good number of years now (hence the GoTo swag shown above), and I think we’ve been down this road before. This is why many people switched to Google AdWords from Goto/Overture in the first place, because the constant battle to be in the top spots drove the cost up and up. Google was a breath of fresh air. They really did reward quality instead of who has the deepest pockets. After all, if Ad1 was paying $1, and Ad2 only $0.50 but had 3 times as many clicks, then Google still made more money. Everyone was happy. That is why I’m worried about the potential bidding wars this may lead to.

Particularly if the Yahoo-Google deal is finalized and approved.

Maybe I’m wrong. It’s still very early days and these may just be some kinks which will have to be worked out. But given Google’s near monopoly and unwillingness to listen recently, I can’t say I’m overly optimistic.

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Are you an AdWords Advertisers? Let me know what you’re seeing or what you think.