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Yahoo PPC - GEO Targeting Problems?

by glimster
2 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hello fellow members,

I seem to be having problems with our Yahoo PPC advertising (and with Yahoo's support team who know less about their own system than I do).

Our company, which works within the financial vertical, resides in Scotland and we target specific cities and regions where we have branches. Of course in Yahoo's case we can only target as specific as 'Scotland-wide'.

We do a lot of advertising with Google Adwords (roughly 10,000 clicks per month) and don't have any issues; except for Google occasionally mistaking a Glasgow IP address over a Stirling address for example.

Note: We only advertise in Scotland and do not want our ads showing in England.

The problem I'm having with Yahoo, is that we're barely getting 100 clicks per month. While Yahoo's search volumes are understandably lower, surely it can't just be 1% of that of Google's?

I don't want to disclose our niche/market here, so lets say that we sell 'properties' and we target a whole host of keywords like:

best properties
best property
property deals
deals on properties
cheap properties
luxury propeties
luxury property

and about 10,000 other keywords all with the words 'property' or 'properties' in it.

Because we have not had any clicks or impressions in Yahoo, I have taken our primary keywords 'properties' and 'property' and set them as Advanced Match (Broad match). I have check that Advanced match has been applied on account level, campaign level, adgroup level and keyword level.

There are no conflicting negatives (in fact I have removed negative keywords altogether).

There are no budget limits whatsoever.

Yet, we still don't get any more impressions or clicks.

Could this be because Yahoo thinks that most IPs in Scotland are in England? I have contacted Yahoo on numerous occasions and although the issue has been escalated, the best answer I have received from them is that "our IP/GEO targeting is not as effective or accurate as Google's". Not an answer I was hoping for.

Any help from someone experienced with Yahoo Search Marketing would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
Glimster
#geo #ppc #problems #targeting #yahoo
  • Profile picture of the author Lucid
    Maybe things are different in Scotland or Europe in general, but Yahoo Search Marketing now uses Bing's Adcenter. Has been for over a year now. I haven't even logged into YSM accounts since then to see if it still works, I'm assuming it doesn't.

    Still, I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my recollection of the Yahoo system.

    >> While Yahoo's search volumes are understandably lower, surely it can't just be 1% of that of Google's?

    Yes, it can. Google is just more popular so that should not be a surprise.

    Differences can also arise in the way the systems work. If you use broad matches in Adwords, their idea of broad match may be broader than Yahoo's. By the way, I never recommended Advanced match in Yahoo.

    You may be right about the IPs. As I recall, if you wanted to advertise in different countries using Yahoo, you had to open different accounts, one for each country. But if it has a Scotland option, seems to me you should be fine.

    >> Not an answer I was hoping for.

    No, not an answer you want to hear but funny they should say that. My understanding is that there's a database somewhere for this. Surely Yahoo would use the same as Google.

    Wait to see what they say, if anything further and let us know. My best guess is, only one percent of people in Scotland use Yahoo. This is lower than I recall compared to Google (typically around 10%) but things change in the course of a year and they can be different in different regions.
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    • Profile picture of the author glimster
      Hi Lucid,

      Thanks for the reply.

      A bit of a coincidence, but right after I had published my post and a little before you posted your reply, I got a call from a Yahoo Development Manager (who's name I'll leave out) and have to decided to wait a couple months before continuing with Yahoo.

      We've been waiting for Yahoo and Bing to merge for quite some time now, but it will only be taking place during the 2nd quarter of 2012. So not long to go and really looking forward to it - it seems you guys are quite far ahead of the UK.

      >> >> While Yahoo's search volumes are understandably lower, surely it can't just be 1% of that of Google's?

      >> Yes, it can. Google is just more popular so that should not be a surprise.

      I ran a test with Yahoo earlier this year that targeted the whole of the UK (something I also discussed with the Yahoo manager), and for our primary keywords we were getting 3% - 5% the number of clicks we received on Google when doing the same test. Of course the same may not apply if only Scotland is targeted.

      Something I forgot to mention in my earlier post was that I have searched for our ads from 5 different PCs, each with a unique Scottish IP, and have only been able to find our ads from one of them. Either way, we ran a few tests with the manager and he couldn't seem to get to the bottom of the problem either. He used some preview tool that was apparently not available to clients, but one that should 'definitely' show our ads. After doing several searches he couldn't find any of them (apart from search terms that actually included a location in them) and even logged into our account to try and trouble shoot the problem without success.

      While he wasn't sure what was causing the problem he explained that it was most likely from IP targeting issues which would apparently improve considerably when everything is shifted over to Adcenter.

      I don't know much about how IPs are located, but like yourself I thought there was a database. Go figure.

      Either way, thanks for giving your input Lucid.

      Glimster.com
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