The Blocked Domains 500

We’ve doubled the number of domains on which you can block your ads from appearing

Indy 500 Your time is precious, so we’re going to try to give you some important news about blocked domains in a mere 250 words.

Here’s the scoop: In your Sponsored Search account, you have the ability to block your ads from appearing on particular sites in our Sponsored Search network. When we initially launched this feature we provided the ability to block up to 250 sites per account. Now, we’re doubling that number to 500, so you’ll have additional control over where your traffic comes from.

OK, so why would you need to block a domain? Maybe you have concerns about the quality of the traffic it delivers (although our click protection system and pricing discounts help mitigate that risk), or you don’t want your ads to appear on a competitor’s site. Or perhaps the site sells products or services, or contains content, that is objectionable to you. Whatever the reason, you now have double the number of “circle slashes” that you can slap on undesirable sites.

How are we doing on our word count? Hmmm, 175; time to wrap up. You can add new blocked domains in your account by clicking “Accounts” under the “Administration” tab. Under the Account General Information panel, click “Submit Domains” in the Blocked Domains field. Then make like your favorite football team’s offensive line, and start blocking away.

For more info on blocked domains, visit our Help Center or our previous blog posts here or here. Whew, 243; we just made it. Start your blocking!

— Jeff Hecox

Posted by Administrator

[ Categories: Updates & Enhancements ]
Bookmark with del.icio.us Send Blog via 360°

28 Comments Add your own

1. ocwebtech | November 14th, 2008 at 4:25 pm

thank you!
thank you!
thank you!
2. maykung | November 14th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

Tnaks alot!
3. loren | November 16th, 2008 at 8:29 am

That is a start but what we really want is the ability to show our ads on Yahoo only as an option as well. MSN allows this and so does Google..why is Yahoo being so stubborn. Let the advertisers who wants only Yahoo ads to get that and the ones that do well with there partners, can choose that option. We would spend much more on Yahoo if we could show our ads on Yahoo only. Please make this change.
4. Steve | November 16th, 2008 at 10:23 am

Question,
Is there a report we can run that tells which third parties our ads are running on with clicks?

Thanks
Steve
5. Marian | November 16th, 2008 at 6:35 pm

Blocking? You’re already blocking. I just looked for my sponsored search ad. What I found is that you have THE SAME SPONSORED ADS on every page. I kept clicking “next” thinking I’d find different ads, but no. What’s with that? Forget about blocking repugnant domains, how about OPENING UP SPACE for small business ads?
6. Jerry | November 17th, 2008 at 10:21 am

I’m with Kevin and loren on this one. You’ve got too many leech partners and I want nothing to do with them. They waste our time and money. This “feature” continues to affect my BUDGET on Y, and not in a good way.

Does the doubling mean there are twice as many of those sites now?
7. Jacob McKenna | November 17th, 2008 at 11:59 am

This ‘blocking’ is merely a public relations ploy as it does not effectively protect advertisers from the sites utilizing fraudulent clicking to increase their revenue at the expense of your adverisers.

Yahoo needs to allow total blocking of ALL sites except Yahoo. This is what Google and MSN do and it is very effective in protecting our advertising budgets from fraudulent or worthless clicks.
8. Ron D | November 17th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

We still can’t block yahoo domains. here is the worst. Our ads are in English. Yahoo runs them Telemundo.Yahoo.com, which is in Spanish. It can’t be blocked since its a yahoo domain.
9. Kevin | November 17th, 2008 at 10:06 pm

I see my comment was deleted so I’m going to post again. I don’t care if you allow your advertisers the ability to block 2 million websites. we want to pick and choose the sites our ads appear on. hear me now Yahoo, because I am not alone.

This site blocking tool is just such a dumb feature, and a joke. In a way, its like an admission by you that your network is total crap. i mean, why would we need to block any sites in your network if they are all supposed to be “quality”. Think about that Yahoo.

I hope your new CEO has half a brain. Maybe your stock needs to go to $4 a share. Hopefully Circuit City will buy you guys out or something. You are all totally clueless.

Happy Holidays.
10. Jim Welch | November 18th, 2008 at 5:18 am

I only want my ads to show on Yahoo.com!!!!

Google gives me that option. When Yahoo does I will increase my Yahoo budget.

I found that over 60% of my Yahoo clicks were coming from parked domains!!!!

Domain blocking still costs the initial clicks and takes my time to monitor undesirable traffic and to block those domains.
11. Ryan | November 18th, 2008 at 7:06 am

Please now include content reports by the site content ads are displayed on so I can decide which URLs to block. This is useless without it.
12. NYC Rob | November 18th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

An absolute insult. Yahoo Search Marketing has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Keep looting your own company all the way down to penny stock levels. Your policies are indefensible.
13. lorent | November 18th, 2008 at 4:35 pm

Not sure why, but my post was deleted for a 2nd time. I want to run only Yahoo only advertising. MSN and Google do it..its time you did it now to. How much ad spending do we need to cut before someone listens to us.
14. Harry | November 19th, 2008 at 2:26 am

I need to select where I spend my precious advertising funds and seeing my invalid clicks climb above 15% have decided to
stop spending with you!

Give me the control I need to select and deselect properly the places my sponsored ads appear,it’s not rocket science.

I simply can’t afford click fraud any more.

Bye

Harry
15. Administrator | November 19th, 2008 at 5:37 pm

Though we currently don’t have a report that specifically indentifies which of our partners the click came from, we suggest you look into your weblogs for such information especially when using tracking urls.

For info on tracking urls, go here: http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/screenref/16897.html?terms=tracking+urls

Hope this helps!
16. julia | November 20th, 2008 at 10:32 pm

I just signed up or this advertising and am not reading I may be wasting money I dont have. What is all this blocking about. I thought I was paying to have my store noticed and make sales. Am I now just throwing it away ? I dont have time to check up on who clicks and who doesnt. Please some Help
17. Bir Singh | November 21st, 2008 at 1:23 am

How can I change my market for ad ?
18. Roscoe Richardson | November 21st, 2008 at 2:42 pm

I am just renewing my ad campaign and am setting my amount at maybe 1/4 of what I would be spending if I knew that my adds only appeared on Yahoo. All I want is sponsered search adds in the search results page itself. Please change this and I will spend more money with you.
19. Ben | November 30th, 2008 at 7:58 am

Dear Yahoo,

500 sites? Well, considering I filled up the first 250 in about a month, that won’t help (and you know it Yahoo). I stopped ALL advertising on Yahoo a while ago due to the OVERWHELMING about of click fraud coming from your “valued search partners.” I have no intentions of returning until Yahoo offers Yahoo homepage search ONLY. I was tried of throwing away my money, and more importantly, my time.

Advertisers have been screaming for this for years. Yahoo’s stock price is at insane lows. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. For your sake, I hope investors don’t see this this page…

-Ben
20. vivek burman | December 11th, 2008 at 3:50 am

ur web in small yahoo business is dispalying that i dont have a small business with you….where as i have the website with u only.but i am unable to update it.?
Why
vivek
09831185656
21. Daniel Goldman | December 11th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

Yahoo:

Thanks but this is no where near enough. 500 only scratches the surface. I have 500/500 and still get porn and other spam every day, 10-20 per day at least
22. Steve Roche | December 13th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

We stopped all Yahoo campaigns for all our clients until Yahoo add a facility to opt out of the non-Yahoo partner network and opt-in to sites on a one-by-one basis. However email responses fom Yahoo are not encouraging so I suspect we will be sticking with adwords.
23. The Unit | December 18th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

Great. Now let us pick when we can run our ads instead of 24 hours a day. You can do it on Google, but not Yahoo. I don’t need idiots at 3am clicking on my ads when they are not going to buy. Conversions overnight are slim to none.
24. Dan Black | December 18th, 2008 at 5:20 pm

Blocking sites does not do any good if the fraudulent clicks are coming from locations where the crooks have erased the referrer. No referrer no way to block them. I stopped all ads in UK and Australia because ALL the clicks were fraudulent. No referer and a less than 2 second average bounce rate and all on the same pair of keywords.
25. Courtney | December 18th, 2008 at 6:53 pm

I am new to advertising with Yahoo. So far, I have spent about $500 and I think this is set up for a recurring basis. Unfortunately, my click through rates are sky high, and no one is buying. Now I am not stupid in thinking that my clicks should automatically convert, but our products do the speaking themselves. When I wasn’t advertising, our close rate was above 65% of the people who visited our site. I do not see the value in what I am spending.
How do I close my account, and get refunded on any unspent monies?
26. gary shapiro | December 19th, 2008 at 6:53 am

we have seen this parked domain problem for a year now..we used to spend 500 per day on yahoo now it is 100. we cut our bids down to the bone..we only want to use yahoo search.
each morning we check our statistics program and their is another few “cockroach” site we got clicked on. we go there and it is the same format for each one..people are gaming the yahoo system and yahoo does not care as revenue is needed to support the stock story.
even msn has a better system..we devote 90% of our budget to google.
27. Steve Kellman | December 19th, 2008 at 8:10 am

This may be a dumb question, but where can I go to find a list of Yahoo’s search partners so that I can review it for potential exclusions? (And I second the requests to allow Yahoo-only ad placements and to limit the time periods that ads show.)
28. Hugh Hood | December 23rd, 2008 at 9:01 am

I agree with the others about a ‘Yahoo ONLY’ option.

We pretty much have ceased sponsored search on Yahoo due to the excessive number of questionable quality clicks from God knows where.

If you want me to start spending money again with you, please add this feature.

Hugh Hood