One of the most important areas in building a pay per click campaign is often neglected by many people. It can really cut down on irrelevant traffic that you’re receiving and for those on a limited budget it can really help you maximise your appearance. I’m talking about negative keywords. Adding negative/excluded keywords to your ad group or campaign means that your ads will not show for search queries containing that term. By filtering out these unwanted impressions, negative keywords can help you reach the most qualified users, reduce your CPC’s and improve ROI.

This has been one area in pay per click that Yahoo has been seriously behind in compared to Google. Previously, Yahoo had a limit on the number of negative/excluded keywords that you could have contained within an account or at ad group level, which was 50.  When you compare this to Google having no limits on place, it’s easy to understand the benefits of being able to insert more negatives on the campaign. The more negatives that you have, the less unqualified searches you will be getting. All of this is now ancient history on Yahoo and they have upped their game, the limit is now 250 on the account and at ad group level.

The question does need to be asked, why does Yahoo have a limit on the number of negatives you can have in your pay per click campaign?

There is a cynical theory throughout our office that these limits are in place to help Yahoo achieve a higher number of impressions on advertiser’s campaigns as they are unable to compete with the traffic volumes available on Google.

So why have Yahoo increased the limit for negatives?

In my opinion, Yahoo will have identified that Google’s success has been based on relevancy, this could be seen as there attempt to increase the relevancy of their searches to draw more users into using Yahoo

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We are all well aware of the news and rumours surrounding Yahoo, news of the rejection of Microsoft’s bid was expected as Yahoo look for a more money per share. In a letter outlining why it had spurned the offer, Yahoo chief executive Jerry Yang said that the firm was in a position to take advantage of ‘a huge market opportunity’. “Today, Yahoo is a faster-moving, better-organized, more nimble company than it was just a few months ago”. This to me doesn’t seem to be ringing true, with all the bad press and around 1000 job lay offs occurring within the company. There only seems to one way they are moving, that’s backwards.

Maybe this isn’t an effect of the recent news, however, I have noticed this week throughout the Yahoo accounts that I manage, that traffic across the board is down, any press is good press so they say, but in this case it is definitely not true. A lot of these users will be turning to Google for search.
There are other whispers about various ploys that Yahoo could attempt in order to stay alive in the paid search industry. The latest one to surface is a 20% share buyout by News Corp which is owned by Rupert Murdoch. News Corp’s media interests include Dow Jones (which publishes the Wall Street Journal), Fox News, The Sun, The Times as well as My Space and a 39% stake in BSkyB. This would create an interesting situation should the bid be accepted, My Space has a long standing relationship with a big search rival of Yahoo’s, you’ve guessed it……….Google!
The main advantage to Yahoo of this bid is that it would the company to remain independent. Time will tell in which direction they decide to go, but for me the Yahoo party seems to be well and truly over.

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