Yahoo Search Marketing Turns Porn Advisory Into PPC SEX AD!

The Spider did it! We are not responsible! Yahoo responds..

A not so funny thing happened on the way to promote our 8 year old Business Web Hosting services. Yahoo reversed content and added content text and listed in Yahoo search a pay-per-click ad "FREE PORN 24/7" with our URL!

Since many who read this may be losing dollars daily to Yahoo and don't even know it. Did you check your listings lately? Even if you don't use the service thousands of other people do and they need to know what is going on in the dark waters of Yahoo ppc Search Marketing. We know they make millions off of misdirection.

But you need to hear the whole story, because it is one you need now fully to pass on. So let's start at the beginning.

It was a simple choice to market our Business Web Hosting services using Yahoo Search Marketing we figured. We already use Google Adwords, and to many other ppc services to list, and of course Overture ppc which is a Yahoo company. Never had a problem so we figure this one could push us over the edge for the year in new leads and sales. Not to mentions start the new year off nicely. (what were we thinking!)

The choice was a natural for us and we figured we would rank in the top 10 easy. A week later our site is listed #1 under Small Business Web Site Hosting, #8 under Business Web Site Hosting, #1 under Small Business Web Space, #15 under Small Business Web Hosting, Wow, we are smiling and thinking good job, these were the keywords we had in the meta tag and this is good. YOU THINK? How right and yet so wrong we were. For little did we know but there is a tragic deep dark down side to the ppc Yahoo Search Marketing and we crashed like a drunken clown.

We start getting calls 24/7 with the questions where is the Free Porn, how do I get the Free Ecommerce site, where is the Free email hosting, where is the Free business web site? Your company is lying and I wasted my time, you guys suck and many more words we can't begin to write. (use your imagination) What in the world is going on we're thinking! We are a honest Business web Hosting company in business since 1998 that bends over backwards for customers and keeps the toll free sales and support lines open 24/7 so we can always help, and we are now being called names.

Where did you hear this about us we ask trying to grasp the snake with our un gloved hands so to speak. Each and every response, Yahoo Search of course, your listed there. We explain this is a mistake but anger is in the air from most prospective customers thinking we are listing misleading ads bate and switch ads in Yahoo Search to draw people in. The FREE PORN 24/7 sent us over the EDGE! And yes it is ppc remember so we are not only getting calls 24/7 we are paying for the clicks.

So you are thinking how could this happen, we must have had these keyword terms in our content text or HTML tags right? WRONG! We contact Yahoo Search Marketing and give them a clue and ask them how. Here is there response on the FREE PORN 24/7. (remember that is just one term there were more)

"We are very sorry, but the spiders are not able determine your intentions. You may want to promote the fact that you do not serve pornographic content, and in doing so you serve text to that effect. The spiders cannot discriminate, it can only process textual content. As you know, links and anchor tags are given some weight, when the search engine algorithms are measuring relevancy. You will be better off not having the porn link on the page."

OK you say.. So how did the FREE PORN 24/7 come about! We had an Advisory link under Guarantees, it looked like this.
____

GUARANTEES
100% Uptime
100% Satisfaction
24/7 Suppport
Porn Free Hosting
____

Basic links to explain Guarantees and the Porn Free Hosting link was a Advisiory and guarantee that we do not allow porn to be hosted. The link was: oursite/html/no_porn.html so customers could read our Terms of Service.

So the spider once it finds all the right terms makes up it's own terms.
We contacted Yahoo to correct this and ask how they could justify a safe link pointing to NO Porn being reversed and turned into FREE PORN 24/7 and their response is: "Sorry"!

What they are actually saying is we have no control. So businesses can't say they don't allow PORN because the Yahoo spiders will turn it into a SEX AD? We can't use the word free a few times in fear the Yahoo spider will spin a web term using every improper way term possible. Is reversing the words and adding 24/7 good? Sure it is to the extent of the obvious terms if the spider is trained but if this spider is not trained and it seems it is not, in fact it is uncontrollable. This means businesses able to pay big bucks with big budgets and small need every dime to grow businesses pay the price in pay-per-click dollars they can never get back and worse as in our case the reputation of their company lost in a web of Yahoo misdirection.

Someone explain how this is good business practices? Please!

Where does the ppc dollars from misdirection go? Glad you ask to Yahoo of course. Here is a small example of the millions they stand to continue to skim, oups I mean rake, sorry, take in. Each URL is $99 x 100,000 businesses = $9,900,000. Spider makes 4 misleading terms per URL = 400,000 terms. Each misleading term gets 30 clicks = 12,000,000 clicks at .30 cents each over 30 days = $3,600,000.(hope your doing the math here) Drum roll please... the damage is - $13,500,000. Nice for a 30 days work right, now figure that 100,000 is most likely closer to 1 million business URLS since most will list 2 or 3. No wonder Yahoo is growing!

As some read this there must be a rumble in the mist and minds are thinking.. I better check my listing. You better because if no one call Yahoo on this and helps us you will pay and pay and PAY.

Yahoo claims to have a click protection in place. Sad it is not protecting us from them. Yahoo is not fixing the click fraud problem their spiders cause since they make Millions on it!!!!!!! Spiders and the webs they weave.. YAHOOO!!!

Now you know the rest of the story, and it's not over for us and anyone else who is using them good luck getting the sticky web off the dollars you spent all year and getting them back. Perhaps there is a need for reform in Yahoo, perhaps it will take class action (legal spider spray) to get Yahoo to control the spiders and their web of misdirection they weave.

Don't think this is a growing problem after reading this? Take a look at News Week Front Cover Story (Oct 2, 2006 - page 46)... Click Fraud!