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Inside the keyword change you likely missed

August 20, 2008 | Internet Marketing

Yahoo has been a frustrating place to buy keywords. But amid massive turmoil at the company, a major change to SEM went largely unnoticed. Find out what it was and how it affects you.

Late last month, Yahoo began phasing out Match Driver, a program that has frustrated search marketers for years.

Match Driver is Yahoo’s method of mapping advertiser keywords to a user’s search. For example, if a user searched for the term “cell phones” in Yahoo, an ad would be triggered if the advertiser bid on the word “cell phone,” matching the advertiser’s phrase with the user’s query despite the plural/singular mismatch.

The original intent was to create a system where advertisers did not need to guess every permutation of a search their prospective customers would type in. Yahoo would do most of the heavy lifting and “map” the permutations to the largest keywords available. This system works in contrast to Google’s system of matching keywords based on the exact keyword that the advertiser chooses to bid on. In the Google system, “cell phone” and “cell phones” would be different triggers for advertising.

Get the full story at iMedia Connection

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