SEO Wolf

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop

The much anticipated launch of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop PPC tool has finally happened, as announced on the official Y! SM Blog. Similar to its counterparts, the Google AdWords Editor and the MSN AdCenter, this PPC management platform promises to deliver a complete set of marketing tools, designed to enhance your control over any SEM campaign.

: Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Loading Screen

A notable difference from more traditional Search Marketing applications is that the Yahoo! SM Desktop tool runs on Adobe Air, as opposed to Google’s AdWords Editor, which is a Mozilla XUL-powered application. Most of you may be familiar with the Adobe Air medium as being the backbone for most Twitter clients, but whether or not this platform will be an advantage in battling the Search giant Google remains to be seen.

I have downloaded the application only recently and there is still much testing to be done before I can offer a full-fledged review of the software, but stay tuned. Alternatively, if you want to beat me to it, feel free to download the tool for yourself at Yahoo! Search Marketing HQ and jot down your own thoughts.

Yahoo! promises us this tool will provide the standard features of a PPC management system:

Bulk editing that will allow easy management of multiple sets of keywords, ad groups, ads and match types;
Export options which will allow us to customize and save a campaign report in Excel;
A keyword tool to facilitate keyword research, long tail targeting and key phrase implementation;
Third-party campaign import options… this one I can’t wait to test. Yahoo! is notorious for holding you hostage for your campaign data and forcing you to export your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns manually and strenuously (one ad group at a time, one keyword set at a time and so forth…), so one is left to wonder if this third-party import option will also have an export equivalent;
Account performance metrics allowing you to assess your campaign’s performance – obviously, a no-brainer.

So far, I must say I am not impressed with the feature list. I would have expected Yahoo! to step up the game with at least one key improvement to the familiar AdWords Editor interface. For instance, I have often wondered when Google was going to allow us to change a campaign’s bidding model (CPC vs CPM) within the AdWords Editor interface, without having to log into the web interface. Another problem with the AdWords Editor is that the ad writing specifications aren’t synchronized with the web interface… for instance, if I were to write an ad with a headline ending in an exclamation mark (”!“) or with the copy containing ASCII characters, the Editor would allow me to publish my changes to my AdWords campaign, which would, in term, get disallowed via the web interface. The point is you can discover some screw-ups within Google’s PPC tool and I’m quite surprised to see Yahoo! not jumping the chance to stick it to The Man with this new and improved Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application.

I have yet to see this tool in some real action, but it has already made a negative impression on me, as it failed to download one of my UK campaigns, stating that:

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop is currently not supported in your market. Please check our website for information on future releases.

The application is not supported in the United Kingdom? I figured it must be due to my Romanian server connection, so I tried accessing it via a proxy… to the same effect. So until further research, I’m giving this tool a disappointed thumbs down.

Download the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application!

Read the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop “Getting Started” guide!

Tell the world about this post: