Posts filed under 'How (Not)-To's'

Anti-Phishing Reminders

Defend yourself from scammers looking to steal your account

Though we have previously published articles on “phishing,” we think it never hurts to remind you of ways to protect yourself from these scammers.

You may receive an e-mail that looks like it came from Yahoo!, taking you to something that looks like a Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page. But in reality it can be a phishing scam from somebody who is trying to duplicate our login page to get your user name and password to hijack your account.

Well, don’t fret. To help combat these phishing scams, we have installed what’s called a “sign-in seal” on our log-in page. Already in use by many financial institutions, a sign-in seal is a cookie-based secret message or image that is displayed on your computer only. (That is, the machine you use to log in to your account.) If you use more than one computer, you’ll need to set up your seal for each. You can create your own custom text message to use as a seal, or upload your own image.

If you do not see your custom seal—and you haven’t cleared your cookies on your browser—when signing into your account, the site you’re on may be a “spoof” site designed to hoodwink you into giving up your valuable personal information. We encourage you to create a customized sign-in seal for your Yahoo! Search Marketing account today, then look for it every time you log in. You can set up your seal from your Yahoo! Search Marketing log-in page (the real one).

How to recognize a scam email
Phishing emails usually try to hook you with some official-sounding message about your account. A common subject line is “Please Verify Your…”. Once you open the email, you’ll often see familiar corporate colors, branding, logos and language. Sometimes they will tell you that your account has been disabled for a bogus reason. At other times, they’ll offer a “free upgrade” to a new (and often non-existent) service.

Don’t give out account or personal info to anyone
The biggest clue in the fake email is that it asks for your username and password. We will never send you an email asking for your password.

Another way to help tell the faux from the friendly is by looking at the sender’s email address. Most of the official communications we send you will come from an address that looks like this: solutions (at) ysm.yahoo-email.com. If you get an email from a yahoo.com address asking you for info, it’s a good bet that it’s a fake.

If you think you’ve been “phished” for info, please let us know by emailing phishing (at) cc.yahoo-inc.com, or forward the email in question to that address.

To learn more about how you can keep from getting reeled in by “phishermen,” and how to guard against other Internet-based scams, visit these resources:

• Common Abuse Issues
• Yahoo! Security Center

— The Team

Worst Gifts for the 2008 Holidays

Run, don’t walk, to take these back to the mall 

Over the past few weeks, we’ve brought you our thoughts on this year’s best holiday gift ideas. Now that that’s out of the way, we thought we’d turn our attention to the worst gifts for 2008. If you happen to spot something on our list that you’ve purchased for a loved one, now’s the time to drag out that receipt and see if you can get your money back!

Off Brand Electronics
You see them on the shelves now and then — products that slightly resemble your favorite electronics, with names like “ePod” and the “Pretendo Vii.” While these products are cheaper than the ones they’re modeled after, keep in mind that the real ones rarely burst into flames or cause your ears to start bleeding. Most consumers are too savvy to grab a rip-off product, but beware, grandparents love to save a few bucks and “Vii” looks an awful lot like “Wii” when you don’t have your bifocals on.

iGarbage
If you own an iPod, you probably have some accessories that you really need: a case, speakers, and so on. Then there are the accessories that no one needs and yet somehow exist anyhow. There’s the iPod musical toilet paper holder, the iPod razor attachment, the iPod breathalyzer attachment and even a few attachments that are slightly more, ahem, adult in nature. Basically if it’s stupid and it can be attached to an iPod – chances are someone out there is hoping you’ll buy it.

Novelty Holiday Items
Hey, do you want a little Santa Claus that dances to the Macarena or plays a 35-second loop of “Who Let the Dogs Out?” No? Well neither will the poor chump you’re planning on giving that to. In fact if you give someone such a thing, you can pretty much expect to get it back next year, probably unopened and possibly smashed into a thousand tiny pieces.

Something Practical
While everyone appreciates and needs practical items, not too many want to see them under the tree on Christmas morning. Even if it’s the nicest vacuum cleaner on the market — a dual bag, for instance — or that toaster that all the celebrities own, practical items you would have bought anyhow don’t usually make the greatest gifts.

Limited Edition Darth Vader Bronze Statue
Is there a Star Wars fan in your life? Well forget the figures and ditch the DVDs, because what they really need is a 4-foot-tall bronze statue of everyone’s favorite dark lord. Weighing in at a mere 150 pounds, Lord Vader is the perfect addition to any sci fi fan’s Fortress of Solitude (i.e., Mom’s basement). And the best part is, it’ll only set you back $18,000! Oh come on, what else were you going to use that money for? A new car, or a few mortgage payments?

Honorable Mention
The good news is that someone finally made a two-person toilet. The great news is that it costs $1400 and is only available in orders of 12 or more. The really great news is that the deluxe version includes a 7-inch LCD television and iPod docking station. Sign me up!

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst/Regifter

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Lola Geek.

Don’t You Dare

What not to do with your search account

We’ve already nagged you plenty about the things that successful advertisers should do—and it isn’t just cleaning your room or taking out the trash.

But sometimes knowing what not to do is just as important. When it comes to creating and managing your ads, avoiding certain mistakes before you make them can save serious time and headaches down the road. Here’s a quick breakdown of the pitfalls to avoid, which should help you realize a better return on your investment, and help our users see better search results.

Content
Don’t bid on keywords for which you don’t offer content. While these tempting keywords may drive traffic to your site, they will almost certainly fail to convert into sales, not to mention tick off the users who clicked on your ad.Make sure you have substantial content that’s relevant to the keyword, rather than just a picture, search results or a link to another site.

Titles and descriptions
Don’t write titles and descriptions that are confusing, misleading or too subjective. Try to create concise titles and descriptions that accurately describe your site and give users a precise idea of what they’ll find there. Don’t include things like superlatives (”world’s greatest”), gimmicky language (“$$$”), exclamation points or words in all capital letters. Also, be sure to include correct spelling and grammar, write your titles in title case (capitalize the first letter of most words) and write your descriptions in regular sentence case.

URLs
Users need to be able to easily find what they’re looking for on your page, or they may decide to look elsewhere. So don’t submit landing page URLs that aren’t clearly relevant to your keywords or that lead to pages with nothing but ads or sponsored links. Make sure that users will be able to discern between your content and your ads. Avoid submitting landing pages with pop-ups, pop-unders or exit consoles. Make sure all landing pages allow users to use the back button of their browser.

Page Quality and Unacceptable Content
We’re concerned about the quality of our search results, so we try to only show ads that lead to information that’s valuable to users. We don’t accept ads leading to pages with inappropriate, deceptive, redundant or poor-quality content. Likewise, we may not accept ads relating to certain products or services or ads relating to areas of questionable legality. For more details please review our complete guidelines on page quality and unacceptable content.

By following these rules (or, depending on how you look at it, by not following them) you’ll help your account to have relevant keywords, targeted ads and URLs that lead users right to what you offer. It may be one of the few times in life when not doing something can have such positive results.

— Noah Belson, Content Quality Analyst

The Three Biggest Mistakes in Search Marketing

Knowing What Not to Do is Important, Too

Editor’s Note: Here on the Yahoo! Search Marketing blog we usually like to “accentuate the positive,” as Johnny Mercer would say. But in search marketing, knowing what not to do can be just as vital as knowing what to do, especially when you’re just starting out. Veteran search marketer, Mike Moran author of Search Engine Marketing, Inc. and Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, offers us some useful tips on how to avoid some of SM’s biggest pitfalls.

Search marketing is becoming mainstream (as opposed to sidestream, I think), but I still find people drowning in that stream. They forget that search marketing is more about marketing than search, because the search technology piece seems so new and different. Woe to the search marketer who misses the marketing part—they’re likely to make one or more of these mistakes:

1: The Rank Amateur Error
Rookie search marketers often fixate on the rankings of their ads, thinking that getting a #1 position on an important keyword is the road to success. Now understand, being #1 usually beats being on page 17 of search results (unless you are targeting the obsessive-compulsive segment), but the days of even knowing your page’s ranking are coming to an end.

Search engines are personalizing more and more search results, so that different searchers get different results for the same keyword. If you focus only on rankings, soon you’ll wake up to find that only the search engines themselves know your rankings. Rather than slavishly reviewing your rankings, your time is better spent finding another metric that best captures the business value of your marketing efforts.

2: The Traffic Report Error
Well, if it’s not rankings, it must be traffic, right? After all, the purpose of search marketing is to drive traffic to your site. That’s true, of course, but the business value of search marketing stems from buyers, not lookers. For paid search, in fact, having more lookers with few buyers is the worst possible situation to be in, because you pay for every searcher who clicks, but you’re getting next-to-no sales to show for your investment.

Instead of studying traffic reports, focus on conversions—the sales that result from your search campaign, whether online or offline. Very often, search keywords that send heavy traffic to your site convert at low rates, while less popular keywords drive more revenue. Focus on the keywords that drive sales, not just traffic.

3: The 24/7 Sales Pitch Error
Some search marketers who avoid the first two errors still fall for the third, blanketing their web site with sales pitches without the proper background. Of course, it’s natural for you to emphasize information about your products, such as advanced features, special deals and capabilities that differentiate your wares from competitors’.

However, that information targets people who already know they need to buy something—folks who know that your product (or your competitor’s) solves their problem. What about the people who know they have a problem, but have no idea what to do about it? Do you have the kind of problem-solving content that those customers are looking for? If you do, figure that some of those people will appreciate the information and stick around to buy from you.

As you gain experience in search marketing, focusing on content across the entire buying cycle (including problem-oriented content for folks not ready to buy yet) will provide you with the widest net with which to snare searchers and turn them into customers. And you’ll be measuring just how many of them buy, instead of tracking only rankings or traffic. By avoiding these big three mistakes, you’ll be ready to make a few lesser mistakes—or maybe even get it right.

—Mike Moran is an IBM Distinguished Engineer for IBM’s OmniFind search and analytics products

Beware “Phishing” Scams

Fraudsters are Out There, Angling for Your Private Information

We don’t want to cause a panic, but the fact is that bad guys who want your passwords are roaming the Net—and, they’ll grab your credit card and social security numbers, your home address, your date of birth and your mother’s maiden name, too, if they have the opportunity.

These days, “phishing” scams are commonly received in just about everybody’s email. Usually, the phonies look just like the emails from large companies that many of us already do business with, like Amazon, eBay and Yahoo!. They even have official-looking logos and language that sounds like a typical, legitimate email.

Fortunately, there are usually clues in these emails that should raise red flags as you read them.

How to Recognize a Scam Email
Phishing emails usually try to hook you with some official-sounding message about your account. A common subject line is “Please Verify Your…” Once you open the email, you’ll often see familiar corporate colors, branding, logos and language. Sometimes they will tell you that your account has been disabled for a bogus reason. At other times, they’ll offer a “free upgrade” to a new (and often non-existent) service.

Recent Phishing Attempt Aimed at Our Advertisers
Like all large Internet companies, Yahoo! is not immune to having its customers targeted by phishing expeditions. First, take a look at this email, which we sent this past Spring to our Local Sponsored Search advertisers, advising them of the upgrade of their accounts to the new “Panama” system:

With a few changes, a scam artist then turned the above into the email below and randomly sent it out to thousands of recipients:

Don’t Give Out Account or Personal Info to Anyone
The biggest clue in the fake email is that it asks for your username and password. Yahoo! will never send you an email asking for your password 

Another way to help tell the faux from the friendly is by looking at the sender’s email address. Most of the official communications we send you will come from an address that looks like this: solutions(at)ysm.yahoo-email.com. If you get an email from a yahoo.com address asking you for info, it’s a good bet that it’s a fake.

If you think you’ve been “phished” for info, please let us know by emailing phishing(at)cc.yahoo-inc.com, or forward the email in question to that address.

To learn more about how you can keep from getting reeled in by “phishermen,” and how to guard against other Internet-based scams, visit these resources:

• Common Abuse Issues
• Yahoo! Security Center

—The Team