I am trying desperately to find a way to e-mail Yahoo PPC reports. Or get access to the API. Yahoo has no apparent way to find any of that information. Here’s their super-helpful reports documentation: Really?! Use the reports page to generate reports?! Wow. I never would have thought of that. Please help. Before I… Read More

Sorry, Bill. Just a mild poking of fun here. I did a search for ‘pay per click advertising’ on Google just now, and saw the following: Note that Microsoft is bidding for, and getting, the #1 position in Google’s sponsored ads. That means they’re outbidding everyone else. Including Google. Seems like a good idea, right?… Read More

The most common pay per click error I see is waste: Spending too much on keywords that don’t perform, and too little on those that do. If you’re a novice, and you have limited time to work on your pay per click campaigns, these 8 steps will help you start improving their efficiency: If you… Read More

Has Yahoo Panama really made a difference? Yahoo’s new paid search ranking algorithm ranks ads based on ad quality and click through rate, as well as bid amount. I’ve been tracking 10 different ads for two different clients. Higher Impressions & Clicks All ads in the test are seeing higher impression counts since the 5th… Read More

I’m tracking statistics for two clients, now, to see how Panama affects them. One client is in a very competitive education market. Since Panama launched, their clickthrough percentage has risen from .5% to 1%. Click rate is up about 30%, too, but so is our cost per click. Which is OK, though, because as of… Read More

Yahoo has released a new paid search ranking algorithm. The new one mimics Google Adwords, by ranking ads, not just according to bid amount, but also by: – Ad quality. – Click through rate. They still aren’t ranking according to landing page quality, but I have high hopes for this new model. It’ll shift the… Read More

Yahoo has announced they’ll be changing the way they rank paid ads: Simply bidding the most won’t get you the top spot for their pay per click ads any more. Google Adwords have been ranked this way for some time. What’s it mean? The quality of your ad, and of your landing page, is now… Read More

Every few months a client comes to me and says “Now that I’m top 3 for Super Widgets in the unpaid rankings on Google, can we cancel my paid search listings?” Usually, no. Here’s two reasons: If you have a top-3 spot in the paid rankings, your competitors don’t. You’re denying them access to the… Read More

Just finished an experiment with a client. First, this was the situation: They wanted the #1 position for their biggest keyphrase. But they couldn’t afford it – they received too many clicks in the course of the day. We reviewed their site and sales statistics, and noticed that most of their customers arrived at lunch… Read More

I just completed a basic pay-per-click marketing checklist. It's now available as a free download. Your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Click fraud is real. I am not minimizing it - we watch for it carefully. But it's a tiny, tiny problem compared to, say, companies who charge you a hefty fee to check for click fraud.

Yup, it’s ranting time. Why are the biggest online players the worst online marketers? I don’t know the ‘why’ but I can sure prove the ‘what’. Here’s a story of Yahoo and GoDaddy wasting pay-per-click dollars like they owned their own mint. It’s also a great story of what not to do. I was searching… Read More

I’m sure you’ve all heard of click fraud by now. In case you haven’t, here’s a quick primer: Click fraud occurs when someone clicks repeatedly on a pay per click advertisement (say, a Google Adwords ad) for the sole purpose of spending the advertiser’s money. Click fraud has become a cottage industry. Folks worldwide get… Read More