I have been using Google Adwords Vs Yahoo Search Marketing for quite some time now. Of course there is lot of different stuff with both the giant but I came across two major different between Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing that could turn into a big discussion!

1. Quality Score:

Google’s Quality Score is on an individual keyword that you choose and is obtained at time when search takes place. You can also have low and high QS keywords in same ad group. With Google the broad match and phrase match keywords show you only average Quality Scores. Only the perfect match can show you even the close real QS, yet it is average since QS is based on things that occur during search.

Yahoo’s Quality Score are only to appear at the ad group level. This simply means that everything in the ad group is a backup for QS. Any bad QS keyword could easily drag down the others. Yahoo suggests that they organize ad group just like Google but then split up the ad groups by the number of traffic. This means with Yahoo I get 3 times as many ad groups than I get Google!

2. Match Type.

Google Phrase – Broad, Negative Phrase, Exact, Negative Broad, Negative Exact. Broad is a wild card for Google that would locate all keywords with any of the keywords in your phrase plus synonyms, singulars, plurals and anything before and after the term. Exact is just the exact nothing more or nothing less and Negatives also work the same way. If you wish to put in a singular then you have to put in singular as well. In case you go for negative match you will not have exact match for the same term. Google believes that a plural and singular keywords to be two separate words. Negatives could be done at the ad group and Campaign level!

Yahoo Phrase – Advanced, Standard, Excluded Words. Here Yahoo does not have any exact match. Advanced is simply like Google Broad and even standard is just like Google broad. But with Yahoo if you put in negative keyword match it would not be excluded if you have it as advanced or standard match. In case you put singular it would exclude the plural. Not like Google, Yahoo singular and plural keywords to be the same keywords and cannot be separated. Negatives could be done at the account level and ad group level only!

Of course there are many other differences like geo targeting, campaign settings and more, but these 2 I found it not very obvious in my understanding. However, if you are a newbie then I would say go try out Yahoo first because it is comparatively easier to get your ads placed then Adwords. Google AdWords is capable of delivering a lot of traffic, but their “quality score” formula makes it difficult for some people to get their ads shown on Google. Ensure you have a good stats program so you would know what the traffic does once it enters your site.

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