Not surprisingly, Google does.

In their evil bid to take over the world using illicit funds scammed from innocent web denizens, Google has arrived at new levels of villainy by jacking the minimum bids on high-volume keywords for many of their advertisers. They’re blaming it on a “temporary issue,” but I, for one, think that this “temporary issue” is an attempt to bilk less-knowledgeable advertisers out of their hard-earned cash by getting them to pay $10 for their best keywords. Sure, they may fix it in a day or two, but not before they make a tidy sum, which, of course, will go into their world domination fund.

You can read all about the Google Scam “technical bug” here, here, here, here, and here.

Tags: Adwords, Google, Bug, Minimum Bid

Yahoo! Search Marketing seems to.

One of my favorite features on Yahoo’s new Panama platform is the import function. They make it possible for their users (most of who, I assume, have ads running on Adwords as well as Yahoo) to import their ads from Adwords so that they can get advertising with you as soon as possible. Sounds like a great plan up to this point, right? Unfortunately, this is where Yahoo’s aversion to making money comes in.

I’ve already migrated a large account over to Panama, and I used the import function to use some Google ads to fill in gaps in the Yahoo campaigns. It was easy and it allowed me to increase my advertising with Yahoo. I just upgraded a smaller account this past week, and when I went to import my (much more extensive) Google ads to the newly upgraded account, lo and behold, the import function wasn’t there.

I contacted YSM tech support, and in the email I was informed that:

After reviewing your account our records indicate your account does not currently qualify for the import tools…

Please note the Import feature is a benefit that is ordinarily extended only to those accounts at the Gold level or higher. Gold advertisers spend at least $6,000 annually with Yahoo! Search Marketing…

Doesn’t it make sense that you would let your smaller advertisers upload their ads so that they could get to $6000 annual ad spend easily? I think that in their desire to incent advertisers to spend more by offering added functionality and service, YSM has shot themselves in the foot on this one.

To their (small) credit, when I pointed this out, I was told that my comments had been forwarded to appropriate department. Hopefully this is not the same as the special filing cabinet for faxes from corporate.

Aaron Wall recently posted about a new free keyword tool from WordTracker. It looks like a spiffier version of the Overture Keyword Selector Tool, which has become more and more unstable recently.

If Yahoo! (stupidly) pulls the plug on the Overture tool, which is looking more and more likely, then this new tool could easily help to fill the hole that the Overture tool will leave. It’s a pretty smart move for WordTracker, who could stand to inherit a huge amount of traffic, judging by the widespread use the Overture tool has received over the years.

Update: Search Engine Roundtable has a statement from Yahoo! that the Keyword Selector Tool is indeed on its deathbed, but they are building a new one to take its place.

technorati tags:wordtracker, free, tool, seo