Great thoughts man, thanks for sharing it with us.
PenisPills | Homepage | 10.20.09 - 3:37 pm | #

Yahoo Panama FTL
James | Homepage | 06.23.08 - 7:57 pm | #

I blogged a few weeks ago about my renewed interest in Yahoo Sponsored Search in my "Dear Yahoo" post. At the time, I thought that perhaps Yahoo was turning a corner in the online advertising sphere and might have finally figured it out. I have now, after spending $220 USD and one entire month advertising with them, realized how wrong I was.

Yahoo's online search ad placement system is horrible.

In fact, I suspect the majority of the site traffic generated by a Yahoo ad is actually fraud. Google Analytics is a powerful tool and I could teach a class on it at this point -- I've been using it since it was released and I have gone to seminars and taken classes. So, I spent a few hours focused on Yahoo traffic analysis. As it turns out, the "visitors" from Yahoo are (98%) fraud generated by Yahoo's content placement site. Probably ad-placement scammers buying ads from Yahoo and then using "pay to browse" or automated methods to fire the ads and collect my money.

I am getting a 1.05PPV (pages viewed per visit) traffic load from Yahoo traffic. That means that 94.55% of the visitors are viewing only the first page after the ad link and then closing the browser -- a sure sign of fraud from the source. All my legitimate traffic ( Google, TheKnot, WeddingChannel, CraigsList, Yahoo Organic Search) averages a bounce rate (immediate exit) of around 3.85 which is low, to be sure, but does not mean fraud. The bounce rate for my average traffic is only 22%.

In addition, Yahoo is reporting that I get about 10 visitors a day from their ads. I am finding about 10% of the traffic I am being billed for actually makes it to my site. I suspect part of this is that most of the scammers have found a way to trigger the ads in an automated fashion that does not actually request pages from my site -- they're just getting Yahoo to record the click and never even downloading pages from CoryTrese.com

Other key terms I might use to describe Yahoo Sponsored Search include "click fraud", "fraud", "deception", "sucks", "lies", "terrible", "illegal", "unfair", "deceptive business practices" and maybe some other words I won't use on my blog.
Cory J. Trese | Homepage | 04.29.07 - 1:57 pm | #

Interesting and a Great Post!
I would recommend everyone to go through the same
Sunny Kathuria
http://www.bizedia.com/
Sunny Kathuria | Homepage | 03.23.07 - 5:29 am | #

It's a silly contest and Google should do a hand job on all of the listings including the did-it page that has been "tweaked".
Lee Odden | Homepage | 02.23.07 - 5:07 pm | #

The contest is getting quite interesting now - when I checked just now I saw did-it.com at the top, I hope someone can knock it off before the end - feel free to link to this site to cause it to happen (its at number 7 just now)
Dave Pasternack
Dave H | Homepage | 02.23.07 - 4:36 pm | #

This is where I found out about the contest. Let's test my skills.
Hugo | Homepage | 02.21.07 - 3:26 pm | #

That Dave Pasternack fellow just doesn't give up does he?
IncrediBILL | Homepage | 02.07.07 - 1:41 pm | #

if you guys would like to try a pagerank optimizer so you could
get into the first page of any search engine such as google etc,
register your website for free!
Bram Boets | Homepage | 02.05.07 - 9:30 am | #

Nice for sharing
Daniel | Homepage | 02.03.07 - 9:51 am | #

Thanks fot the infos. Intersteing. My website is here
Daniel | Homepage | 02.03.07 - 9:50 am | #

Thanks for stopping by Dave.

I think the contest is about as necessary as your store actually. Might as well make fun of it all.
Lee Odden | Homepage | 01.30.07 - 2:59 pm | #

Hi Lee, Yes, thanks for mentioning the contest, and also for posting the link to my store. It's always a pleasure to read your work. Best, Dave Pasternack
Dave Pasternack | Homepage | 01.30.07 - 2:39 pm | #

Thanks for sharing the contest link! Seems very interesting. I think I'll try my luck.
PI | Homepage | 01.30.07 - 3:33 am | #