I received a phone call from my Yahoo rep saying that they are offering a search query report for our clients. I was very excited about this since I love the search query report from Google.
Unfortunately, I was soon disappointed after hearing that I couldn’t run the search query report out of the Yahoo PPC interface myself. Here’s how it works:
If you want a search query report run in Yahoo, a Yahoo technical person has to run the report for you. Then they review the report for you, and if they find any additional keywords that you could be targeting in your PPC account, they will add these keywords in a new campaign in your Yahoo account for you. Now, of course, this new campaign will not be activated until you review it and give them the okay.
After my Yahoo rep finished the search query expand report and uploaded the new campaign into my account, he emailed me a spreadsheet of the actual report. This is something I had to request. The report itself is not very expansive, meaning there are few search terms listed and I’m not entirely sure I got the whole report. I didn’t really find any keywords to add as negatives keywords, which is really why I wanted the report and why I use it so frequently in Google AdWords.
As for the new keywords they found, I think they’re reasonable keywords to add to my account, meaning they’re relevant to what I already target and could potentially increase sales. However, I will have to move those keywords from the campaign in which they were uploaded and put them into their appropriate ad group for better targeting.
When all is said and done, I’m disappointed in Yahoo that they have the capability to run a ‘search query’ report but are being stingy in my opinion. They seem to only be using it for their benefit, by adding additional keywords to your account, and not allowing you to run the report yourself to find any negative keywords that could be driving unqualified traffic.
If you want this report, you will have to contact either your Yahoo rep or call the Yahoo customer service line and request this report for one of your accounts.
