5 Burning Questions About Your Ads

In which we answer the most frequent queries from our webinars

If you want to know whether to accept a wedding invitation if it doesn’t say whether there’ll be an open bar, we recommend Yahoo! Answers. If you want to know more about how your Sponsored Search account works, though, our free online webinars are the way to go. We hold these regularly and post the archives online, but for a quick taste of the give-and-take, you can peruse the following Q&As about ads that advertisers often toss our way:

How do I change the display URL on my ads?
The display URL is the web address that is displayed with your ad instead of your destination URL, which is typically lengthy. A display URL can provide your ad with a more concise, visually appealing URL. The display URL appears below the ad’s description and must correspond to a page on your site.

You can actually change the display URL on two levels: the account level, which will become the default URL for your whole account; and the ad level, which will individually override the account-level display URL. You can change the account display URL on the Administration tab in your account by clicking the “edit” button in Account General Information section.

You can change the ad display URL by navigating to the ad group containing the ad, clicking “Edit” next to the ad, and clicking on the black arrow next to the Display URL field.

What happens if my ad title plus an inserted keyword creates a title of more than 40 characters?
When you use the insert keyword feature, you are required to enter “default text.” If using the inserted keyword in your ad would cause the title to exceed 40 characters, then the default text will be used instead.

How often is the quality index re-calculated for my ads?
Quality index scores are constantly re-calculated (every time your ad is displayed or considered for display) based on relevancy factors, along with the ad’s click-through rate relative to its position and to other ads displayed at the same time.

When receiving traffic via the Advanced match type option, is there a way to find out the exact search term that searchers used?
If you enable tracking URLs (located in the “Administrative” tab under Tracking URLs), you will be able to see what terms were searched on and the ads they matched to in your account. Read more about tracking URLs.

What are long descriptions used for?
While your long description may be shown on some Yahoo! distribution partner sites, only your short description will be shown in search results on Yahoo.com. Thus, creating a long description is optional for each ad you create. A long description can be added to provide more detailed information about your products, services and offers, but it may be seen by fewer users.

— The Team