Today we’ve had two announcements that are set to have an impact on search and the control that we get to enjoy over our campaigns..
Typically Yahoo have frustrated those of us in the search team, with their ‘glass floor’ on how low your bids can go for keywords – which typically have been much higher than Google’s and MSN’s. As of today this level has been lowered, allowing us to reduce our bids (and hopefully, in turn see our CPCs fall) in line with the other engines. The official statement is below;
We’ve reviewed minimum bid amounts on our keywords and reduced the minimum bids on many terms. You can review your new minimum bid requirements by clicking on the “Campaigns” tab and then on “Keywords”. By clicking on each keyword you’ll see the minimum bid.
On top of this came the news that Google have increased the visibility on which search queries are trigging an advertisers ads, by removing the “all other queries” blanket on search query reports. Official statement below;
If you’ve used the Search Query Performance report before, you may have noticed that some of your traffic was grouped under a line item called “other unique queries.” This line encompassed queries with very low volume, often occurring triggering your ad only one or two times. However, some advertisers found that a significant portion of their spend was grouped under this heading, which made it difficult to manage keyword variations.
Starting today, the Search Query Performance report will show all queries that resulted in a click, where the user has not specifically blocked their referrer URL. In other words, this includes all queries that you would see in your server logs or if you use a tool like Google Analytics. In requiring that the referrer URL be present, we are upholding our commitment to user privacy.
If you’ve used the Search Query Performance report before, you may have noticed that some of your traffic was grouped under a line item called “other unique queries.” This line encompassed queries with very low volume, often occurring triggering your ad only one or two times. However, some advertisers found that a significant portion of their spend was grouped under this heading, which made it difficult to manage keyword variations.
Starting today, the Search Query Performance report will show all queries that resulted in a click, where the user has not specifically blocked their referrer URL. In other words, this includes all queries that you would see in your server logs or if you use a tool like Google Analytics. In requiring that the referrer URL be present, we are upholding our commitment to user privacy.
Two bits of good news in a day? Whatever next…?!
