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Keyword Features

Keywords are the connecting points between you and your customers. Millions of unique keywords appear on the Yahoo! network, and some of those keywords have no or few advertisers bidding on them. This can create a large opportunity for you and your business to reach new customers.

Our keyword features can help you further target your audience by allowing you to adjust the way your keywords appear in ads to make them more relevant to user entries.

Match Types

When searching online, potential customers may type in many variations of your keywords, including:

• Misspellings
• Plural form
• Switched word order

Because it would be difficult for advertisers to bid on and manage every possible variation, Yahoo! Search Marketing offers two:

• Standard match type – A standard match occurs when a user enters a term that is the same as the term you have bid on.
• Advanced match type – For matches that use your keywords in various contexts, such as in a phrase, separated by other words, or in a different order.

For greater control, you can manage your match types at different levels in your account.

Standard Match type

The Standard match type displays your ads when a user searches for something online and you have already bid on the same keyword phrase. The Standard match type accounts for singular/plural variations and common misspellings.

For example, if you advertise on the keyword “plasma television,” your ad may be displayed for the following search queries:

• plasma television (same)
• plasma televisions (singular/plural variations)
• plamsa televisions (common misspellings)

Advanced Match type

The Advanced match type extends your reach by displaying your ads for a broader range of search related to your keywords, titles, descriptions, and/or web content.

For example, if you advertise on the keyword “plasma television,” your ad may be displayed for the following search queries:

• plasma television (same)
• plasma televisions (singular/plural variations)
• plamsa televisions (common misspellings)
• buy a plasma television (in a phrase)
• plasma or flat panel television (separated by word(s))
• television with a plasma screen (in a different order)
• flat panel screen (sub-phrase query)
• plasma (general/broad query)
• 42-inch plasma television (specific query term)
• ‘Brand A’ plasma television (specific query term)

Your account, campaigns, ad groups and keywords are all automatically set to use the Advanced match type when you sign up for Sponsored Search.

Excluded Words

When using the Advanced match type, using excluded words can help block unwanted searches that you believe may not be relevant to what you are offering. Excluded words are not available with the Standard match type. You may add up to 250 excluded words at both the account and ad group levels.

A common example might be if you bid on the term, “DVD Player” and you have opted into the Advanced match type. You want to somehow specify that you do not sell DVD players from “Brand A.” To prevent your ad from coming up each time someone searches for “Brand A DVD Player,” just add “Brand A,” as one of your excluded words. Using excluded words can help prevent you from spending money on clicks that won’t generate business.

A more complex example of how Excluded Words can refine the display of your ads in relation to user queries uses our “plasma television” example from above. You might choose to exclude the word, “plasma” so your ads will not display for queries from users searching for “blood plasma” or “astrophysical plasma”; however, you should take into consideration that excluded words can also prevent your ads from displaying for certain sub-phrase queries. For example, excluding the word, “plasma” could also prevent your ads from displaying for “plasma flat panel television” because the phrase contains the word “plasma,” as well as, “flat panel screen” due to the composite nature of our Advanced match type feature with regard to excluded words.

Insert Keyword

The insert keyword feature is designed to save you time and help increase the relevance and click-through rates of your ads. It uses a “keyword placeholder” to dynamically insert the user’s search query into your ad’s title and/or description when it is displayed. You can use insert keyword when you create an ad, or you can edit an ad so that it uses this feature.

Using insert keyword also provides you with the opportunity to specify alternate text that can display in your ad. Alternate text may be used to display text that is shorter than the actual keyword, create readable or grammatically correct text, display text with the correct capitalization, or substitute more descriptive text than the actual keyword.

The following is an example of how the insert keyword feature might alter your ad to a user’s specific search query:

User’s search query: “Brand A DVD player”

Without Insert Keyword

With Insert Keyword

Using this feature can make your ads more appealing to users and may increase your ads’ click-through rates.

Next: What Account Features Are Available to Help Me Market My Business? – Traffic Quality