Some know this and others don’t, but Yahoo! is slowly phasing out their Match Driver program which was their answer to making search easier for marketers. However, there was one big hurdle they could not overcome and it was the big G. Google campaigns could not seamlessly plug into Yahoo! since Google allows misspellings and plural.single variations where as Yahoo! would see them as the same term and show one ad.
This was troublesome for several people that I know, as they would have a very string ROI on on permutation and Yahoo! would not allow them to have a separate word in Panama. Success might have been had on “digital cameras” for a site that had a stellar review platform and allowed customers to compare before purchasing, and the word “digital camera” did not see the same success as the user using the singular form was not in the same state of mind as those that used the plural. Google allows marketers to see this and capitalize, Yahoo! fails to allow the optimization process to occur.
This may also be part of the Google/Yahoo! deal where Google is looking to serve more and more ads on the Yahoo! platform since the Microsoft deal did not work out. At the end of the day, Yahoo! needs to go back to board and figure out what exactly they want to do, and getting out of the search space may be the best answer as all the hard work to launch Panama appears to be going down the tank.
Tags: Google, Match Driver, PPC, Yahoo! search marketing
