Our goal is to create a marketplace where users and clients benefit. Users win because they find what they’re looking for quickly and easily. Advertisers win by getting a large volume of targeted traffic to their sites. Adhering to the listing guidelines is essential and directly benefits both advertisers and users.
Below are the 10 most common rejection reasons along with tips on how to avoid them.1. Content
A web site must have substantial content that is clearly and obviously reflective of the keyword’s meaning. There must be a strong, direct relationship between keywords and the content, purpose and theme of the site.
Approved Keyword: URL:
Reason: attorney
http://www.t-tlaw.com
Rejected
Keyword: URL:
Reason: lemon law
http://www.t-tlaw.com
Even though the site is about legal aid, there’s no substantial content that clearly and obviously reflects information about this specific law on the site. Therefore, “lemon law” would not be allowed as a keyword.
Please note that Yahoo! Search Marketing does not accept listings containing or relating to certain products or services. Our Unacceptable Content Policy can be found at
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/relevancy.php.
2. Obvious Path
The URL must take the user to a page that is obviously and immediately relevant to the specific keyword, where the user will be able to find the content quickly and easily. A diluted path is a source of frustration to users, who will often click away from the site if they cannot find the information quickly.
Approved Keyword: URL:
Reason:
Rejected
Keyword: URL:
Reason: Online Dating
http://www.yahoo.com
It’s obvious that the user should click on the link for “Personals.”
Scam Support Group
http://www.yahoo.com
Although users might think to click into the “Groups” area, they may not know that they should then click on Cultures/Community, then Crime, then Crime Prevention. A better URL would be: http://dir.groups.yahoo.com /dir/Cultures___Community/Crime/Crime_Prevention?show_groups=1
3. Title and Description Specificity
Titles and descriptions should provide an accurate reflection of what the user will find at the site, and should be at least as specific as the keyword.
Approved
Keyword: Find Love
Title: Find Singles in Your Area
Description: Looking for that special someone? Yahoo! Personals puts you in touch with
Reason: singles across the nation.
“Find Love” does not appear in the title or description, but synonymous language suffices here.
Rejected
Keyword: Title:
Search Engine Marketing
Big Discount on Yahoo! Search Marketing
Description: Check out Yahoo.com for sign-up deals, special offers and information. Reason: It’s not clear how the title and description relate to the keyword. It’s fine to add descriptive information to descriptions, so long as they are specific to the term. A better description would be: Market your products through Yahoo! Search Marketing. Check out our sign-up deals, special offers and SEM information.
4. Title and Description SuperlativesTitles and descriptions must be objective. We do not allow superlative language such as “best,” “cheapest,” “the leader,” “can’t be beat,” etc. This policy keeps our listings from sounding too “salesy.”
5. Trademark
Advertisers may bid on trademark terms if, in addition to meeting our regular guidelines, their sites meet at least one of the following three criteria:
In addition, the titles and descriptions for these listings must focus on the site content that qualifies the advertiser for the keyword, so that users have a clear understanding of what to expect if they click on the listing.
This policy allows us to honor legal trademarks, while ensuring that users will find the products and services they’re looking for.6. Broken Site
Yahoo! Search Marketing does not approve listings for sites that are not functional during the time of review. This is to preserve a good user experience and to protect advertisers from futile clicks.
Yahoo! Search Marketing rejects general terms where the offering of the site is locationrestricted and therefore not a good result for a broad audience of users. We don’t want a California user in search of a hairdresser to have to sift through Florida hairdresser results. Likewise, we don’t want to deliver poor click-throughs to advertisers. However, if a site sells services that a reasonable person searching on the term would expect to travel for, we will grant the term.
We do not apply our Location-Specific guideline to: Events, seminars, conventions, conferences, niche or exotic services, theme parks, surgery sites, or non-travel advertisers who offer boarding as a component of their service (addiction treatment centers, schools, etc.).
Yahoo! Search Marketing will only send traffic to our advertisers’ own web pages. Advertisers may not list a site that they do not control. However, Yahoo! Search Marketing does accept pages that are powered by, or are co-branded with, another entity. This rule is in place so that we may protect the verticals from over-saturation by one type of affiliate site. We don’t want the top three results for “marketing” to be comprised of three affiliate marketers who have their URL redirect to the grantor site.
9. Adult Site: Unapproved Term
Yahoo! Search Marketing maintains an adult database comprised of approved adult terms. We do not allow non-adult terms for adult sites. This is to protect the integrity of the adult marketplace by only delivering users who want to see adult content, and to focus on user intent. For example, a user who types in “Paris Hilton” may be looking for a hotel in France, and not necessarily the celebrity.
10. Location Terms
Sites bidding on location names (e.g. “Las Vegas” or “France”) should either share information about the location or advertise an event, attraction or accommodation there. The appearance of a place name on the web site, regardless of prominence, does not qualify that place name as a keyword. In addition, just because a business happens to be located in a particular place, the business’ web site does not qualify for that place name as a keyword.
Yahoo! Search Marketing’s click protection systems are in operation 24 hours a day, monitoring each click and filtering out those that are questionable or clearly unqualified. To do this, we track search-and-click patterns across more than 50 data points — including IP address, users’ session information and browser information, and pattern recognition — to help detect invalid clicks.
Sources of Traffic SpikesSome advertisers automatically point the finger at a nefarious competitor or Yahoo! Search Marketing distribution partner as the source of increased clicks, and this can unfortunately occur. However, many times the real culprit is less sinister. For example, one cause we have identified is when Mac users, who are accustomed to double-clicking their single-button mouse to make a selection, repeat that action when clicking on search listings. In this circumstance, our system may interpret it as two distinct clicks. However, Yahoo! Search Marketing's Click Protection technology will flag and remove the second click before you are charged for it.
Some keyword markets have a lot of volatility in their quantity of clicks, sometimes leading to traffic spikes that might be interpreted as fraudulent activity. Imagine how many added clicks bidders for the term “Janet Jackson” received after the infamous Super Bowl incident. If you see an unexplained surge in traffic, it can often be related to a news story. Our Click-Through Protection team is trained to identify these click spikes and their possible legitimate sources.
An increase in traffic can also be explained by an upward movement in your listing position, either because you increased your bid, or another advertiser lowered its bid or dropped out completely. A change in creative content (title and description) by you or another advertiser can similarly create a surge in customer traffic.
One more important note: Yahoo! Search Marketing filters out all clicks that come from our IP addresses around the world. So if an editor or member of our Customer Solutions team clicks on your listing in servicing your account, you will not be charged.
What You Can Do
We acknowledge that no system, no matter how sophisticated, can detect every invalid click. While bid prices will ultimately reflect the true quality of the traffic, Yahoo! Search Marketing continues to spend substantial time and money to make sure that our technology leads the industry. To further our efforts, we also rely on, and encourage, our advertisers to bring possible invalid clicks to our attention.
Fortunately, the practices you are probably already taking as an involved, successful advertiser are the ones that will help identify possible invalid clicks. These include monitoring:• Your web server logs, for source of clicks
• Your number of clicks
• Your click-through rate
• And the keywords that are most effective in garnering clicks and subsequent conversions
If you observe a dramatic change in one of the above areas and you suspect you have received invalid clicks, we invite you to contact our Customer Solutions team or your Yahoo! Search Marketing account representative. Please collect as much information as possible about the suspected activity and have it available for our Click Protection team. With your help, our advertiser security systems can continue to be improved, and the number of invalid clicks can be decreased even further.
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