Many search engine marketing professionals, have viewed Yahoo as a secondary search engine to Google; with fewer audience targeting options and no dayparting available, it has not been easy to synchronize online advertising efforts as with Google campaigns.  However, this may change very soon.  Later this week, Yahoo will unveil its enhanced targeting features for their Search Marketing program. 

Yahoo’s new enhanced options will finally allow advertisers to schedule their ads with day parting.  There will also be an option to select multiple states, cities, DMAs, zip-codes, and mix and match for each campaign.  The option to combine zip codes with specific states, cities or DMAs is not available on Google, or any other search engine for that matter.

Yahoo goes one step further with its targeting functions by allowing advertisers to target audiences demographically on a search campaign.  Audiences can be targeted by gender or age.  While Google also has a demographic targeting option, it is only available for content campaigns; Yahoo’s option allows for demographic targeting for both search, as well as content campaigns. 

These new Yahoo features only allow for advertisers to reach a more specific audience.  According to Michael Walrath, Senior Vice President, Advertising Marketplaces Group at Yahoo, ‘As the economy continues to put pressure on advertising budgets, marketers are looking for increased accountability for every dollar they spend. Yahoo!’s new targeting products significantly improve the ability for search and display advertisers to reach their target audience, providing increased efficiency and accountability.’

This is a new era for Yahoo Search Marketing; the enhanced functions and features are only the beginning.  It’s not clear whether Yahoo will become the next Google, but one thing is for sure, they are moving in the right direction.

Spring training is in full swing and if you are playing baseball this is probably an important question.  When it comes to measuring the success of a website, however, the term “hits” should be banned like performance enhancing drugs are banned in baseball.  Wait, they are banned right?  Remember the days when websites would brag about how many hits they received per day?  You would visit a site and they would have the “Hit Counter” at the bottom of the home page.  The perception was the higher the hit count, the more popular the website.  Those days are long gone, but I am still surprised people refer to their “hits” as a measurement of their site’s success.

As defined by Webopedia.com, a “hit” is “The retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a Web server.  For example, when a visitor calls up a Web page with four graphics, that’s five hits, one for the page and four for the graphics…”  Given this reality, the number of hits has no bearing on the popularity of a site.  If one visitor can count as many as 10 “hits” or more in one visit depending on the number of graphics on a page, I’m sure you can see the reason website “hits” as a measure of success is so flawed. 

It’s said that Page Views or Unique Visitors are better metrics to determine the success of a website and that’s true when comparing them to counting hits.  But if you run a website that offers a product or service, you ultimately want visitors to convert into customers.  If your average visitor navigates through 10 different pages and spends 10 minutes on the site, would you consider your site successful?  If you had 1 million unique visitors a month, would you consider those visitors qualified?  I don’t think either one of those metrics, by themselves or together, provide enough data to determine the quality of the traffic or success of your site if you’re selling a product or service.  They’re an upgrade from counting “hits”, but then again batting .200 is an upgrade from .175, but neither will keep you in the big leagues!

When evaluating the success of a website, if I had to choose just one metric to hang my hat on, it would be cost per conversion.  But I would recommend you review all the metrics together to get the best picture of the “health” of your website.  Ultimately, you want visitors to make a buying decision and engage in a transaction whether it’s purchasing a product or subscribing to a service before they leave.  Does it matter if they spend 10 minutes on your site or 1 minute before they convert?  Maybe, but I am sure it matters more if they convert first and foremost.  Next, look at the other metrics to determine how to lower your cost per conversion and optimize your site’s usability.  Just don’t count hits, unless you are in spring training.

Beginning February 24th, Google officially updated its display url AdWords policy regarding multiple urls in each ad group. Previously, multiple display urls were allowed in a single ad group. Now, only one display url is permitted in each ad group. This amendment applies to all advertisers, regardless of any previous exceptions.

According to The Official Google Blog, the change was made in an effort to provide more relevant search results for Google users. By having the same high level domain name for each ad group, users search experiences will be enhanced.

This update only applies to top-level domains. For example, if you have a domain www.shoes.com and www.shoes.com/shoes in the same ad group, both would be permitted. On the other hand, if you have the display urls, www.shoes.com and www.freeshoes.com, they would not be permitted as they do not have the same root domain.

Google recommends separating ad groups with multiple domains into separate and unique ad groups. By doing so, you will not only comply with the policy modifications; you can also track the performance of your domains in a more efficient manner.

The display url and the destination url should still match. The other requirements regarding urls will remain unchanged. For more information on Google’s display url policies, you can visit the AdWords Help center.