Comments on: OMG, Yahoo Search PPC is a rip-off

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:53:00 +0000

Update: After months of chasing, then finally threatening them with legal action, we got some kind of resolution…. they offered us a token gesture in to our YMS account, but as of now it still hasn’t arrived.

Looks like more chasing may need to be done.

Never using them again.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 14:12:00 +0000

We are currently trying to get an explanation out of Yahoo as to why they are showing our ads on a lot of irrelevant sites. We also noticed on reports that at one point our clicks started decreasing, the few days after there was a approx 400% increase in impressions and clicks, and the same with our monthly spend.

Something tells me Yahoo weren’t happy that income from our campaign had declined.

Neither us, and definitely not Yahoo become 400% more popular over night, and it doesn’t matter what I say to them, all I get is copy and paste responses, I received the same response 3 times in a row.

I also don’t have time to go through filtering the thousands of irrelevant sites out which they recommended ( or rather just copied it from a document they had ) a few times.

Were in the process of working out how we can get this money back…… I feel it could prove fruitless.

By: Italian Wine Fan

Italian Wine Fan — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 08:06:00 +0000

Absolutely and totally, you spend more time adding sites to the block list than you do adding keywords, the ctr with yahoo is what you would expect thru positions 1-8 but the partner shites, shockingly, have 33% CTR or higher, not surprising as its the owner and his monkeys generating what is, of course, click fraud.

It is a shame, because actually Yahoo was for many years the better converting site for our product, yes the hits were less but so were the bid amounts and you could make some nice product (which we can’t anymore on google as the behemoths own all positions now).

Its a shame they went down this route to generate more traffic, however, it can not be sustainable, everyone will simply abandon yahoo or bid far far less and work in click fraud. Kinda sad for a company like Yahoo to stoop so low.

By: London Marketing Agency

London Marketing Agency — Thu, 26 May 2011 08:22:00 +0000

Good post on the pitfalls of web advertising.

By: Rich

Rich — Fri, 20 May 2011 13:36:00 +0000

Hello,

Friday, 20
May 2011

As a company adverting on Yahoo UK PPC we have just found out that the three campaigns
we had with them are being shown on 3712 websites. The vast amount of clicks
were from these thousands of obscure websites that bring nothing to us but plenty
to Yahoo.

When people
are searching for a product they either use Google, Yahoo or Bing. The chances
of someone going to some oddball site, seeing a search box and then typing in a
product totally irrelevant to the site they are and then coming across our PPC
link, clicking on that link and then buying is possibly nil.

You can of
course block a particualr domain from displaying your advert but the blocking
limit is 500 so what about the remaining thousands.

Yahoo has
been contacted today in Dublin
and I have yet to receive a reply. I was told that Elsa Stuart a Manager at Yahoo
Search Marketing would call me but so far nothing.

I advise anyone
advertising or contemplating advertising on Yahoo to think very carefully as I can
tell you that you will waste a lot of money. Yahoo SM is, to a great extent a
con. They have these so-called thousands of “Partner” websites that are simply
out there to make themselves and Yahoo money. In my view it’s almost tantamount
to legal theft.

I would be
please to tell the whole story if anyone is interested so you may email me at sales@aircontrol-systems.co.uk

Richard
Coombe

By: Savage

Savage — Mon, 07 Mar 2011 11:07:00 +0000

Totally Agree – DONT USE YAHOO – Unless you want to waste your time and money and support what in my humble opinion is a totally criminal operation – at least with google adwords you can turn off the partner network and when you use google, the partner sites do resemble usefull sites. But yahoo is just full of spammy sites that no real person would use or even atempt to look for our kind of service, and you cant just tuen it off. Yahoo tell you to use a domain the domain blocker feature to filter unwanted sites, so basically I have to predict what spammy web site they are going to allow next. Oh and they limit that to 500 domains, Its such a clear con that yahoo is letting happen. Its just bad business from yahoo – I would expect better from such a company – clearly they do not have the ethics, as such they need regulating and big fines. In the mean time, vote with your feet – don’t use them let them die like the dinosaur they are!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 20:18:00 +0000

Your ads were probably part of an I-frame ad scam:
http://www.adsbefree.com/advertising/rates-cpm/half-ad-impressions-fraudulent.html

By: AA

AA — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 19:20:00 +0000

Thanks Dave,
I’ve just woken up to the same thing and when I printed the Ad Delivery Report, I received the same surprise you did. I had written to Yahoo several weeks ago to ask why my traffic was suddenly going through the roof, and they offered no suggestion – just the usual fob off.

After seeing the above report, I responded to their response advising that I had suspended all my campaigns until they could advise why my ads were appearing on these content sites. Then I went looking through the google search and found your article.

By: Knightschemdry

Knightschemdry — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 20:42:00 +0000

Guard up or down your taking it in the shorts…

By: Knightschemdry

Knightschemdry — Sat, 04 Dec 2010 20:37:00 +0000

either way google yahoo are getting paid way up front for guess work basically.. Wake the F up people these these business modules need to be flushed down the toilet…