Driving Traffic Quality

A Roundup of Our Latest Efforts

Quality traffic.

For you, the advertiser, this means qualified clicks from users most likely to become customers. As a part of our ongoing effort to improve the quality of the network and your traffic, we have undertaken several initiatives. The newest of these is a feature called “Blocked Domains,” which allows you to specify certain sites in our partner distribution network on which you do not want your ads to appear.

The new Blocked Domains feature, which launches later this month, is just the latest among several initiatives we are undertaking in order to in order to provide increased value. Others include:

Discounts
You may automatically receive pricing discounts based on our assessment of the quality of traffic coming from our partner distribution network.

Click protection
We have installed a system to track and identify clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.

Intercontinental traffic control
“Blocked Continents,” a recent enhancement, automatically excludes traffic from continents other than North America. If intercontinental traffic is important to your business, however, you can easily change this setting by going into your Administration tab and clicking “Account General Information.”

To learn more about what we’re doing around network quality, I invite you to visit our new Traffic Quality Center.

—Reggie Davis, Vice President, Network Quality

Photo courtesy rrazor, via Flickr

Posted by Administrator

[ Categories: Did You Know?, Updates & Enhancements ]
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56 Comments Add your own

1. Yahoo lanzará a mediados&hellip | October 1st, 2007 at 11:30 am

[…] ha informado que a mediados del mes de octubre lanzarán su nuevo servicio Blocked Domains, un servicio destinado a ayudar a los publicistas para que no envíen publicidad a estas webs que […]
2. Richard Cook | October 2nd, 2007 at 7:57 am

The blocked sites feature needs to be implemented ASAP. My site stats shows 85 to 90% of the worthless visitors are coming from search sites that are part of the Yahoo search network. Many of the sites that are part of the Yahoo search network are sending visitors with a 100% bounce rate. If I can’t block those search sites I’ll have to consider closing my account. 800 of every 1000 visitors I’m paying for are just clicking the ads to earn money for the website owner who is part of the search site’s affiliate program. It’s an issue I’m glad you guys are finally addressing.
3. Andy Sweet » Yahoo &hellip | October 2nd, 2007 at 8:50 am

[…] has finally taken a BIG step towards solving their traffic quality […]
4. AccuraCast | October 2nd, 2007 at 12:37 pm

You say: “We have installed a system to track and identify clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.”

Wasn’t such a system already supposed to be in place???
5. Steven | October 2nd, 2007 at 3:37 pm

Yahoo should have implement the block domain feature years ago as I, as an advertiser have complaint to them endless times and get no respond. Glad they are finally taking the bid step to improve click quality. I hate to see my Yahoo ads appear on a third party website who shows on Google sponsored links at lower cost and post my Yahoo ads at higher costs. I am surprise that Yahoo is so slow in response time. Was considering canceling them after the Christmas season.
6. Nina | October 2nd, 2007 at 9:00 pm

I echo the above sentiments. He’s got it exactly right. We’ve often vastly reduced spend to avoid some of the worst offending keywords for this issue, but are looking forward to turning them back on. Thanks! (now can you make something similar to the adwords editor?)
7. Bayram | October 2nd, 2007 at 10:44 pm

Yahoo gives me already quality traffic. Hopefully these numbers comes up to thousends of visitors from hunderds.
8. cc | October 3rd, 2007 at 4:07 am

The blocker should have been in place before the network was allowed to rip us offf. SHAME ON YAHOO!
9. Dale Green | October 3rd, 2007 at 9:29 am

I do get a lots of hits,that I do not belive are real?? I”m useing payper click and my sales have really gone down this year.yes you made me number one on search,but it has not help very much.I have even added more money?? can anyone help me.www.aluminum-thingstosell.com thanks Dale
10. Administrator | October 3rd, 2007 at 10:55 am

AccuraCast asks:

You say: “We have installed a system to track and identify clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.”

Wasn’t such a system already supposed to be in place???

Correct. In fact, the system has been in place for quite a long time. This is just a reminder that it is in place. Sorry for the confusion.

-M2
11. Eddie Spagetti | October 3rd, 2007 at 11:57 am

I hope Yahoo spend some time improving their organic search too. It’s quite a joke some of the resultss that appear in the top ten listings for certain keywords. But maybe if the organic listings were improved, Yahoo would not make as much money on sponsored search?
12. david | October 4th, 2007 at 5:52 am

as anew member i kindly requist you to up grade me thanks
david
13. Felicia | October 4th, 2007 at 8:27 am

I will like to be upgraded too. Thank you.
14. Administrator | October 4th, 2007 at 11:00 am

David and Felicia,

The entire system will be upgraded for Blocked Domains later this month. It’s not on an account-by-account basis. Just FYI.

Blog readers will be the first to know when it goes live.

Cheers!

- M2
15. Scott | October 4th, 2007 at 5:36 pm

I think it’s actually pretty ridiculous that we have to choose what partner sites to turn off. I want them ALL TURNED OFF!

Please consider providing such an option, I’m sure many would use it. I know Yahoo is all about earning money, but I think this just makes you guys look greedy. That’s no good in my book. It has led me to close many of my clients’ accounts in the past.
16. Paula | October 4th, 2007 at 11:18 pm

After I write this comment, I am turning off all my Yahoo ads. My conversion costs on Google are between $2 to $3 per day. Just pulled my Yahoo costs for Sept. On one campaign they are $18.06 another $9.07 per sale, it’s pathetic. Beyond shocked, I make about $6 per sale when costs are $2 to $3. I’m out of pocket this month. Been doing this web business over 3 years- never seen anything like this before. I’m done until they fix this.
17. Values And Egos Inflate: &hellip | October 5th, 2007 at 4:53 pm

[…] clients. The company’s top click quality officer, Reggie Davis, posted about it on the Yahoo Search Marketing blog: The new Blocked Domains feature, which launches later this month, is just the latest among several […]
18. This Week In SEO - 10/5/0&hellip | October 5th, 2007 at 6:50 pm

[…] Driving Traffic Quality […]
19. Laurie Bredbury | October 6th, 2007 at 3:24 am

Personally I’m not bothered where the traffic comes from provided that it is genuine. I find that a lot of the traffic I get from the organic SERPS is false and, I suspect, script-generated. What we really need is to be able to block the IP addresses of clickers we suspect to be script kiddies, comment spammers or just downright fraudulent.

I don’t believe that search partners are all totally stupid. If they create false clicks and get found out - very easy I would think - that would be the end of their business.
20. Tom | October 6th, 2007 at 10:37 am

Does this mean, we will have the ability to block all sites but Yahoo if we choose? The fact that we continue to get traffic from a Mexican IP address with Yahoo ads despite blocking all non US traffic has left us frustrated. My platinum manager has been unresponsive.
21. adam yakish | October 6th, 2007 at 11:09 am

sick
22. Ryan Bardo | October 6th, 2007 at 11:13 am

Sweet Sauce
23. darin cale | October 7th, 2007 at 8:51 am

I cant believe the number of ghost clicks I receive. Why was this not done years ago? I am spending money for clicks I dont even want!!!!!!!!!!!! Are we going to get reimbursed? As of today, my account is turned off until you get this mess straightened out.
24. Laurie Bredbury | October 7th, 2007 at 9:14 am

I agree with Darin, ‘ghost’ clicks are the single biggest problem we have IMO. Please, please give us the ability to block them. I ivevitably find that the bad clicks come from IP ranges that I blocked from my other servers ages ago.
25. David Joel | October 7th, 2007 at 12:28 pm

I want to be able to block ALL so-called partner ads from
appearing. I want to appear ONLY on YAHOO. It is impossible for me to find out every domain that you partner with that may bring up my ad.

ALL you competitors allow blocking from ALL partners of their systems if the advertiser chooses to.

While you’re at it you might also allow automated ‘off-on’ of
an account with pre-set times during the week or day. ALL your competitors also allow this.

I have, for years, turned off my account manually EVERY DAY in the evening AND every weekend.

You are very very far behind the technical and competitive
curve!
26. david | October 8th, 2007 at 6:30 am

as i recieved account number as 2125862718 why am i not being activated
it stops itself and i think its complite i dont understund when you say that its incomplite
please sign me
david
27. Yahoo Addresses Quality, &hellip | October 8th, 2007 at 5:50 pm

[…] Yahoo paid search is adding some new features for advertisers. In a few weeks they will launch Blocked Domains. Like Google AdWords, you’ll be able to block specific domains that you do not want your ads to appear on. You will be able to block up to 250 domains per account. That includes blocking an entire domain, a subdomain or a directory in a particular domain. […]
28. root123 | October 8th, 2007 at 11:55 pm

A great step towards quality traffic indeed.
29. Laurie Bredbury | October 9th, 2007 at 1:45 am

I have just had an email from customer support telling me that although Y! use sophisticated security techniques they cannot block a particular IP address which had been sending me false clicks every day; but not to worry, I’d only be charged for a single click per day from this address even though my statement says I’ve been charged for all of them. It took nearly a week to get this reply to my initial notification of the problem. This is not encouraging but hopefully just ‘teething problems’ perhaps?
30. Richard Rist - The Large Art Company | October 9th, 2007 at 6:03 am

I too have a long history of problems with Yahoo search partners sending quality traffic. I am glad Yahoo has finally taken notice and will allow us to block domains. I personally have cut back my advertising to about 25% of what I would be willing to spend if it were not for the quality click problems.

In my opinion, advertisers that run those types of sites should come to us (the advertiser)and ’sell” us on why we should place our ads on their site. If they are aggressively marketing their web site and driving quality traffic, then I should want my ads there, correct?

We as Internet entrepreneurs are constantly marketing our web site, why shouldn’t search partners have to do the same?
Richard
31. Laurie Bredbury | October 9th, 2007 at 9:09 am

“We as Internet entrepreneurs are constantly marketing our web site, why shouldn’t search partners have to do the same?”

I’m sure that Y! have some way of monitoring click quality from these sites so they are in a far better position that we are to decide who to stay with and who to drop. Personally I don’t care if people get my ads off the back of a cereal pack as long as they are genuine, prospective buyers. At a pinch all the partner sites could be dropped but this would just mean fewer, more expensive clicks, and this is the whole purpose of having a bidding system, we all bid what we feel we can afford and still make a profit. The fewer the available clicks, the more they will cost.
32. The Dog Clothing & Dog Costume Company | October 9th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

These are all very good features to increase the traffic quality. Keep up the good work!
33. Miles Johnson | October 11th, 2007 at 2:00 pm

The blocked domain concept will go a long way to combat click-through fraud that is widespread with the so-called “partner networks”. I hope YAHOO promotes this feature as the most honest and transparent paln for internet advertisers - and yet another reason to choose YAHOO SEARCH over competitors. I have made dozens of complaints to GOOGLE about this very issue and GOOGLE simple dismisses my inquires, and states that “third-party partner click-throughs” are part of the “GOOGLE monetization program”. Perhaps also known as cashing with partners with these rip-off sites.

Please also take steps to block or unlist websites that are just webpages of more YAHOO, GOOGLE or MSN advertisers. Their headlines and meta tags are designed to deceive and re-direct click-through traffic earning them revenue, costing advertisers with worthless clicks….and wasting search engine bandwidth.

THANK YOU YAHOO!!!

p.s. - Please alert WALL STREET INVESTORS about what is going on now with Internet Search. If the public knew what was happening at GOOGLE, and there partner schemes to boost advertising revenues through illicit click-through’s….I am certain their stock would adjust to a realistic trading range. The fraud here is big and I am glad that YAHOO is going to attempt to manage it for their customers benefit.
34. Google Adwords Australia &hellip | October 11th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

[…] Yahoo announced today on their blog that by the end of the month, advertisers can block domains on their partner network. This will allow you to disable your ads being shown on suspect sites, and I know from experience that I have couple that I will definately turn off. This is a good initiative and more can be found about it at : http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/10/01/driving-traffic-quality/ […]
35. Mark | October 15th, 2007 at 4:19 pm

It’s not enough. We stopped our advertising a couple of months ago. I understand that it will be my responsibility to choose each site to block, with a maximum of 250 site. We will not start advertising again until we can block all off-Yahoo advertising, with one click option.
36. Jim | October 15th, 2007 at 10:30 pm

Yahoo is doing everything they can to make money, even stealing form it’s customes.
37. Jim | October 15th, 2007 at 10:32 pm

Yahoo is doing everything they can to make money, even stealing form it’s customers.
38. wolfis.com | October 16th, 2007 at 1:01 pm

as an ad publisher using yahoo’s ad feed on over 6000 of our domains , i have to say that traffic quality works both ways - as long yahoo supplies completly wrong ads even so the correct keywords are choosen and as long advertisers flat out lie to yahoo and say the traffic is garbage, the whole system will never work .

we publish ads for yahoo and google for well over 4 years and have even gotten bonuses for good quality traffic, in addition we constantly make tests that clearly show a well over average convertion to sales from our visitors if we use affiliated programs that pay commission based on sales not on leads. so we know for a fact that we supply well over average converting traffic and we are shock on how yahoo measures traffic quality.

yahoo - change your attitude and look who is sending you good and who is sending you bad traffic, after all there are other companies out there that reward traffic quality and know what they are doing !
39. Laurie Bredbury | October 16th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

I often wonder whether advertisers unfairly blame ‘partner sites’ for bad traffic when the real culprits are malicious people using scripts to generate false clicks. It is so, so easy to target the ads alongside the generic SERPs and even a third form kid could do it. It appears that Y! refuse to block the IP addresses of bad neighbourhoods where this sort of thing happens so I suppose we have to either accept it or go elsewhere. Yes, we can challenge clicks and ask for a review but it takes ages and time is money so is it really worthwhile in the end? By the time we get a reply we could have another stack of problems to report from the same source and we all have better things to do.

If Y! will not block known bad neighbourhoods I for one will use another way to generate traffic.
40. Laurie Bredbury | October 16th, 2007 at 2:07 pm

“We will not start advertising again until we can block all off-Yahoo advertising, with one click option”

Frankly I would prefer to have only off-Yahoo advertising. I would be more confident that the clicks were all genuine and I could then set my bids accordingly.

Perhaps things are different in the USA but I do not accept that Yahoo partners here in the UK are so stupid as to be criminally fraudulent. It is malicious people who click on ads that are the problem, not the sites that those ads are published on, IMO.
41. Marcus | October 20th, 2007 at 2:06 pm

Does this feature actually work? The first thing I did was block our own domain as we didn’t want to advertise our own site on our own site. Every ad I check I am find our own domain appearing on our own site. That’s obviously not very useful. How can I specify that my ad is not shown when I have explicity blocked the domain?
42. V0lTr4n Bl0G » Yaho&hellip | November 12th, 2007 at 8:43 pm

[…] ha informado que a mediados del mes de octubre lanzarán su nuevo servicio Blocked Domains, un servicio destinado a ayudar a los publicistas para que no envíen publicidad a estas webs que […]
43. Susie C | November 30th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

I’m trying to get my website listed on yahoo,.
44. Susie C | November 30th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

I’d like to get my website on the yahoo search engine.
45. http://www.stormpages.com/free1music/musicdownload.html | December 10th, 2007 at 8:06 pm

Hi boys!91102f8639a6558fce68199649bc9306
46. Monogram Cake Toppers | December 27th, 2007 at 2:59 am

Nice. I love all the spam postings.

My god, the Admin is even participating in this discussion, and doesn’t remove all the links to “Preeteen Asian Porn.” Nice. People, if this doesn’t show you how lousy Yahoo is at managing things, I don’t know what is.

Yahoo,
Allow us to exclude ALL partner sites with one click. You could offer this to us immediately, you know you could. In the meantime, I am pausing my AD account. Let me know when you’ve got that feature avallable…
47. Dale | January 10th, 2008 at 9:04 am

HELP- we thank yahoo,for doing there best,we need to try to work with each,you pass my site to all you can,and I will do the same for you,each one has to tell there friends and they tell there friends-etc-etc and there would be no paid per click or charge for adwords >thanks Dale
48. Yahoo now allows domain b&hellip | January 15th, 2008 at 8:41 am

[…] on give marketers more control on where their ads will, and will not be seen. It recently added a Block Domains function to its advertising controls. You can use it to select domains that you do not want to advertise on, […]
49. 77Lab » Blog Archiv&hellip | January 25th, 2008 at 8:32 am

[…] on give marketers more control on where their ads will, and will not be seen. It recently added a Block Domains function to its advertising controls. You can use it to select domains that you do not want to advertise on, […]
50. directory | February 2nd, 2008 at 12:34 am

I like your website ,and like to communicate with everyone on this issue!
51. Is Paul McCartney Dead? | March 11th, 2008 at 2:49 pm

On line marketing is a tough thing to get a handle on. It seems like it is always changing and trying to keep up with the latest treds is a lot of work. This article is very good and helps lots.
Thanks
52. QuickSet Learning | April 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm

I really like Yahoo it helps to balance out Google and all the rest. I hope this works.
53. Gaia Herbs | April 15th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

Thanks for the info
54. Golf Property in Belek | May 14th, 2008 at 6:43 am

Always yahoo shows more results than google but also it is strange that mostly people search on google …
55. zek | May 14th, 2008 at 9:43 am

Wow great site! Some really helpful information there.
I’m sorry for little off-topic, but I want to ask you about design of this site.
Did you make this template yourself or got from any templates website?
Looks pretty cool for me. Wonderful well this reading.
56. zek | May 14th, 2008 at 9:46 am

You say: “We have installed a system to track and identify clicks that we believe shouldn’t be billed to our advertisers.”