How is Panama working for you?
Submitted by Vlad on Sat, 12/23/2006 - 08:31.
I have finally finished the upgrate. I like many new features, but unfortunately after one week, the conversions are falling and to be honest the only PPC that performs well is MSN for me right now. Any one has good reports on Panama? Any tips and/or tricks?
How is Panama working for you?
So far I'm impressed with the new product. However, the upgrade was a nightmare.
I'm in the process of updating my e-book to include the new platform. I'll probably put together a webinar too. Now I just need to find more time ;)
How is Panama working for you?
Jeremy I really enjoyed the "php redirect" video you have created. In fact I have placed the link to it on my blog. I hope you do not mind.
How is Panama working for you?
I will say the new platform is much better than the old one. However, Panama stills fall short when compared to Adcenter and Adwords. Most of my issues with Panama are not with the interface but rather Yahoo's policies.
First of all, the editorial process is still arbritrary. Sure keywords may be active immediately but they will just get removed a few days later. I have had really targeted keywords that go to specific landing pages with plenty of content get removed for "insufficent content". To me it seems that the editorial process is worse that it was before. I have questioned Yahoo on why specific keywords keep getting removed. After battling back and forth I can usually get the keywords approved. But, I shouldn't have to hassle with them to do business.
Second, for the life of me I do not understand why Yahoo only allows Gold members and above to import campaigns into their account. I mean my account has a limit of 50,000 keywords, what's the difference to them if I manually put in keywords or I import them in. Obviously, it is a huge time saver to import campaigns. I did send an email to Yahoo telling them that their competitors offer the import feature to everyone. I never heard back, except the next day half of my keywords were removed. Go figure!
I almost hate to do business with Yahoo. I feel like I have to beg them just to get stuff done. I have never felt that way with MSN or Google. Like one poster said on another message board, "It's like putting lipstick on a pig!"
Jeff
How is Panama working for you?
You'll also find in Panama that broad keywords will now be integrated in with your exact keywords.
Eg.
If you had a keyword "red widget", you'll now see "widget" keyword in the mix. This is what I'm experiencing.
How is Panama working for you?
I just got moved over to the new Yahoo Search 2 days ago and to put it mildly, I hate it with every fiber of my being.
When they created the new system and how to move accounts over, they obviously didn't have affiliates in mind who have hundreds of thousands of words. So many of my words were grouped with other words that weren't even close to each other.
This is a nightmare that will take me several months to recover from.
I wish they would have given advertisers the option to stay on the old system. I was very happy with just using bulk upload to upload all of my keywords with the keyword in the title and grouping keywords in Catagories
James
How is Panama working for you?
Hey Jeremy,
I was kind of wondering how you handled having more keywords then Yahoo allows. I have 2 Yahoo accounts and they just switched over the one with the least number of keywords(120,000). When I called support, they said they only allow 50,000 keywords per account, but I guess they moved all of mine over, but I can't move them to different ad groups, because my account is pass the limit.
I have a second Yahoo account that will be switched over in February that has 1,250,000 keywords. Did you have to set up multiple accounts to handle all of your keywords? But even with 50,000 per account, I would still need 25 accounts to hold all of my keywords. This is crazy.
Should I start deleting keywords before the move? Have they done away with the bulk upload of 20,000 a day for Gold members? I would think they would have to, because you will fill your account up in 2 1/2 days.
I'm really in a panic here.
James
Yahoo and keywords
James,
I would really try and talk to an account manager at Yahoo to see what you can do. I think this will be the only way to get around your 1.25 million keywords in one account.
Best,
Jon
How is Panama working for you?
Hi James,
I had to spend several hours on the phone with my account rep and do a lot of consolidating. I'm not sure what kind of support they offer at the gold level, but you'll definitely want to get a migration specialist on the phone.
Best,
Jeremy
How is Panama working for you?
Thanks for the info. I got a call from an account manager the other day and they said there was no way they could move me over with all of my keywords and my account was too big, so they wanted to discuss some reduction options with me.
I told them to just wipe my account completely clean. I'm going to run reports in CJ and Linkshare and find all the keywords that have made me money since I started 10 months ago and use those words as a start. Then I'll start testing new keywords on a smaller level. That technique worked well on my smaller Yahoo account that only had a little over 100,000 keywords, so I'm thinking it will work well on this one.
Thanks,
James