Yahoo "Import" Feature Problems on Excel 07

As much as I have frustrations with Panama, the relatively new Search Marketing platform from Yahoo, I have found the "import" feature of great benefit. True, it did take a couple of days to get the hang of it, saving the file as Unicode Text with a .csv extension(?!?!) - but after that it was all plain sailing.

That was until I upgraded my computer to Office 2007! After that it all went blurry and fuzzy again, and nothing seemed to work. Even Yahoo's official instructions on how to use the import tool seem to contradict itself!

Try and try and try as I could to use the tool, it was just not happening. I did some searches and found a thread on SearchEngineWatch.com. Apparently what you need to do is:
1. Save the file as Unicode (.txt)
2. Close down your Excel spreadsheet
3. Go back to its saved location and rename it with the .csv extension
4. Upload the file using the Import function

HOWEVER...this still did not work for me?

I understand that Office 07 is a relatively new package, but it seems crazy that the import function is incompatible with it.

So, if anyone from Yahoo reads this, please, please, please make the import process easier and compatible with all versions of excel.

I would be interested whether this has worked for anyone else?

Yahoo's New Partners

We were running our standard end of month PPC reports today and came across something quite interesting for one client. On Yahoo! they experienced a huge increase in impressions, although we changed nothing major within the campaign. We have content network switched off and these results are very much out of the blue as you can see:

Feb	Impressions	Clicks
X Y	2618	20
X Y Z	1500	6

March	Impressions	Clicks
X Y	24,351	16
X Y Z	44,446	26

(X Y Z stand for different words, with X Y Z being an extension of X Y)

Having looked a little further into when these clicks occurred they always arrived in short bursts. The first came between Monday the 10^th of March and finished Friday the 14^th of March. The next burst came between Monday 24^th of March and lasted until Friday the 4^th of April. To me this looks like a testing period; from Monday to Friday and then a longer period of two weeks, including a weekend.

Having thought about this and considered going mad, we called Yahoo! After some denial on the second call they did mention that they might be “trialling new partners” but that they didn’t have any available information at the moment.

Looking to a number of our other clients who are also on Yahoo! we have notice similar trends over similar time periods, with nothing but tweaks made to the campaign.

Interesting, something is going on behind the scenes with Yahoo! the question is just what?

Ad Scheduling on Yahoo - SORRY YOU CAN'T!

Why - oh - why does Yahoo not have the functionality to ad-schedule/day part?

I was setting up a campaign this week and was astounded by the fact that they did not provide this feature.

Google Adwords allows you to schedule your ads to run at any time of day, and on any day of the week.

MSN Adcenter allows you schedule your ads to run on any day of the week and will let you set the times of day but within the specific times:

3 AM - 7 AM (early morning)
7 AM - 11 AM (morning)
11 AM - 2 PM (midday)
2 PM - 6 PM (afternoon)
6 PM - 11 PM (evening)
11PM - 3 AM (late night)

This obviously does not give you as much control as Google, but still provides you with an option.

Panama's launch this year (in the UK) was supposed to try to get some way in closing the significant gap between itself and Google. With basic features like this missing, I think they still have a long way to go!

Strike A Balance!

In the rush to modify websites to comply with the latest Google webmaster guidelines it is often the case that other search engines namely Yahoo and MSN are overlooked.

Why?

As things stand, Google's reported UK market share is approximately 75% and rising, with Yahoo, MSN and the rest making up the difference. Therefore, logic dictates, that Google compliance must take precedence when it comes to optimising for search engines. I personally don't have an issue with this stance, however, please take into account the following if you are devising your own SEO strategy or taking advice from others;

• Google's market share may fall in the UK.



• Internationally, Google is not always the dominant force, for example, in Russia, the Yandex search engine is reported to be the market leader with 49%, similarly, in China, Baidu controls 62% of the market. In Italy, Google's market share is reported to be 53.5%.



• It is constantly rumoured in the press, forums and blogs that a search engine merger or acquisition is just around the corner, therefore, search engine market share today could radically alter tomorrow!



• Depending on your viewpoint, some observers have also pointed out that some Google webmaster guidelines will have no impact on SEO. For example, is the "If-Modified-Since HTTP header" inclusion which is recommended, merely an attempt by Google to reduce the work of its spiders?

Compared to other market places which have been around for hundreds of years, the internet industry is still in its infancy, therefore, as the title of this post says "strike a balance with your internet marketing strategy".

Problems with Yahoo Panama

We have had real problems with our newly migrated panama accounts this week. We were only able to navigate around the site for a maximum of 20 minutes before it would completely freeze up. Then when the account was frozen, we were unable to access anything within the Panama interface.

Speaking to Yahoo, they suggested that it may be problems with IE7 or Firefox, or even our internet connection. This confused us somewhat.

After about 3 hours of pulling our hair out (I am nearly bald now - used to have very long hair!) we found that it was a problem with the Panama login that we had initially bookmarked. When upgrading each account to Panama, you are taken directly to the new Panama login screen which asks you to bookmark it. As I took little notice of the login, I did not notice the length of the URL which was a lengthy dynamic url with many parameters. We then decided to try a version of the URL without the dynamic part:

https://login.marketingsolutions.yahoo.com/

And...Bob's your uncle! We had access to our accounts again! Thank God!

So, If anyone is having System Error with a newly migrated Panama account I would recommend re-bookmarking the login above, and then re-logging in. You may well find this is the answer to all your problems!