Glossary
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Account offline
The status of your account when you do not have sufficient funds available or your listings are not meeting our editorial guidelines. When your account is offline, your listings do not appear in search results.
Account online
The status of your account when have sufficient funds available and your listings comply with our editorial guidelines. When your account is online, your listings appear in search results.
Ad position/rank
The position of your listing within the sponsored search results. You control your listing's ranking based on how much you bid on your keywords.
Advanced match type
A keyword matching option offered with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. The Advanced match type enables an advertiser's listing to appear in a broader range of relevant searches, even when the bidded keyword is not an exact, word-for-word match with the search query.
Algorithmic search results
Non-sponsored listings that appear in the main section of the search results page. Search engines use proprietary algorithms to crawl web sites and create indices. When users search for specific keywords, a search engine retrieves relevant listings from its index that match the queries. The ranking of these listings is based on relevancy. Also known as natural, or organic, search results.
Approximate daily budget
The amount you decide to spend each day on your keywords. The budgeting feature calculates your monthly budget based on this amount. (Note: Your daily spend might differ slightly from your daily budget due to fluctuations in keyword marketplaces, traffic levels, etc. Though your spend may vary slightly from day to day, your monthly spend will remain close to your monthly budget.)
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Bidding strategy
A plan that helps you determine how much to bid on your keywords. Usually based on factors like conversion rates, an effective bidding strategy can prevent overspending and improve your return on investment.
Budgeting
A feature offered with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Budgeting lets you control the amount you want to spend each day. This feature distributes your spending throughout the day and month, so your listings appear online every day of the month.
Buying cycle
A three-stage process during which online customers research, compare and purchase products or services. Customers have different needs and use different types of keywords in the various stages of the buying cycle.
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Category
An option within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account that lets you manage related keywords by groups.
Click index
A scoring system designed to help you understand how well your listings are performing. It evaluates your listing's click-through rate relative to your competitors, taking into account your current position.
Click protection
A system designed by Yahoo! Search Marketing to help ensure that you don't get charged for unqualified clicks. The Click Protection System uses a variety of techniques to filter the clicks before they show up as a charge within your reports.
Click-through
When a user clicks on your search listing and arrives at your web site.
Click-through rate (CTR)
The number of clicks your listings receive divided by the number of impressions they generate.
Content Match
A feature offered with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Content Match displays your existing listings near relevant articles, product reviews and more, enabling you to reach customers through online publishers, newsletters and email.
Conversion
The successful completion of a desired action by a customer. Depending on the product or service offered by a web site, this is typically a sale, newsletter sign-up, product registration or price quote.
Conversion Counter
A free tracking tool that lets you see how your Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings are performing. Conversion Counter measures the number of clicks that lead to conversions on your site.
Conversion rate
The number of visits to your site that convert to a sale or action divided by the number of visits to your site.
Cookie
A piece of information that your web site places on a user's computer. A cookie identifies the user's computer during current and subsequent visits to your web site.
Cost-per-acquisition (CPA)
What it costs to get a customer. To determine the cost-per-acquisition, you divide the total cost of your advertising by the number of customers you acquire. Sometimes referred to as cost-per-conversion, cost-per-lead or cost-per-sale.
Cost-per-click
The cost of advertising divided by the number of clicks.
CPM calculator
A tool that measures the return-on-investment of a cost-per-thousand (CPM) impressions advertising model (such as banners). The CPM is the amount you pay for each 1,000 impressions.
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Daily budgeting report
Data that helps you track your daily spend against your budget. This information is available in the reports section when you log into your account.
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Editorial status
The section within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account that allows you to review your Declined, Pending and Removed Listings. Your approved listings appear on the Manage Listings page.
Excluded words
An Advanced match type option that helps minimize irrelevant searches. For example, if you sell plasma televisions but do not repair them, you can exclude any search terms that include the word "repair." The excluded words option enables you to concentrate your advertising spend on highly targeted clicks.
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Fast Track®
A starter service offered by Yahoo! Search Marketing. Fast Track provides a customized bidding strategy and expert assistance to get your search marketing campaign up and running quickly.
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Geo-targeting
A capability offered by Yahoo!'s Local Sponsored Search product. You can promote your business to prospective customers within a geographic range you determine, ranging from a half-mile to 100-mile radius around your location.
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Impressions
The number of times a web message is displayed. For example, each time your Sponsored Search listing appears on a page, it counts as one impression.
IP address
An identifying number assigned to a computer on a TCP/IP network. IP addresses are used to calculate how many visitors come to a site.
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Keyword
A word or multi-word phrase that users enter into a search engine to find information, products or services online. Advertisers select and bid on keywords that are relevant to their products or services. Depending on the amount you bid for a keyword, your listing will appear in search results when interested people search the Web for what you offer.
Keyword Selector Tool
A tool designed to help advertisers identify search terms to bid on. The Keyword Selector Tool shows you how many searches were conducted in the last month on keywords related to your business.
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Landing page
The web page on which customers "land" when they click through to your web site from a search listing, banner, link or other online advertisement.
Listing guidelines
The relevancy standards and content criteria that Yahoo! Search Marketing uses to evaluate search listings.
Local Sponsored Search
Local Sponsored Search is a pay-per-click product that displays your business listing in local search results. By targeting customers who are searching for businesses in your area, Local Sponsored Search helps drive traffic from the Web to your physical store locations.
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Manage My Account
The section within the Yahoo! Search Marketing web site that allows you to monitor and make adjustments to the settings of your account.
Marketing Console
A tool that measures the effectiveness of online marketing campaigns. Marketing Console generates reports that show exactly how your search advertising, email marketing, banner advertisements, paid inclusion and/or affiliate programs are performing.
Match types
The ways in which a searcher's keyword can be matched to an advertiser's listing. Yahoo! Search Marketing has two match types-Standard and Advanced.
Max bid
The maximum amount you willing to pay when a consumer clicks on your listing. This amount determines your ranking in sponsored search results.
Minimum bid
The lowest acceptable amount you can bid on a keyword. Yahoo! Search Marketing's minimum bid is currently $0.10 per click-through.
Money Manager
Within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account, the Money Manager tools allow you to set budgets, add money and adjust payment methods for your search marketing campaigns.
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Natural search results
See Algorithmic search results
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Offline listings
Within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account, these are all of the listings you have elected to temporarily take offline.
Online listings
Within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account, these are all of the current active listings.
Organic search results
See Algorithmic search results
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Paid search
Paid search (also known as sponsored search) is based upon advertiser bids on queried keywords. Paid search results appear separate from algorithmic, or natural, search results, typically along the top, down the side and across the bottom of search results pages. Listing order is determined by the amount each advertiser has bid on keywords.
Pay-per-click
The payment model used for sponsored search advertising. Advertisers set bids on their keywords and only pay when searchers click the search results listings associated with those keywords.
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Reports
Data that is available to you in the Reports section of your Yahoo! Search Marketing account. You can run a variety of reports on your account, including Account Activity Detail, Account Summary, Billing Transaction Detail, Category Detail, Category Summary, Daily Budgeting Report, Intra-Day Account Activity,
Keyword Activity Detail, Keyword Summary, Match Type Activity, URL Activity, and Monthly Financial Reports.
Resource Center
A section within the Account Management portion of Yahoo! Search Marketing's web site dedicated to providing you with tips, guidelines and FAQs to help you get the most out of Yahoo! Search Marketing's products and services.
Return on advertising spend (ROAS)
The amount of revenue generated per dollar spent on a given advertising method.
Return on investment (ROI)
The amount of profit generated per dollar spent on a business, including product, service and advertising costs.
ROI calculator
A tool in the Yahoo! Search Marketing Resource Center that measures the ROI (return on investment) of a PPC (pay-per-click) advertising buy.
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Search engine
A web site that searches other web sites for specified keywords and returns a list of the sites where the keywords were found. Typically, a search engine works by sending out "spiders" to explore as many web sites as possible. Another tool, called an indexer, then reads the web site information and creates an index based on the words contained on each site. Each search engine uses a proprietary algorithm to create its index so that, ideally, only meaningful results are returned for each keyword query.
Search engine marketing
Online marketing that utilizes search engine results to reach customers with product and service information.
Search Optimizer
A tool designed to enhance bid optimization and help advertisers maximize the effectiveness of their advertising campaigns.
Search Submit
Products that allow advertisers to manually submit their web pages for inclusion in natural, or algorithmic, search results. Search Submit Express offers basic inclusion; Search Submit Pro allows for more control over how listing titles and descriptions appear in natural search results.
Sponsored Search
A pay-per-click product that allows your business to be featured in the sponsored search results at the top, along the side and across the bottom of search results pages.
Sponsored search results
Search listings that are generated as a result of advertiser bids on queried keywords. Sponsored search results appear separate from algorithmic, or natural, search results, typically along the top, down the side and across the bottom of search results pages. Listing order is determined by the amount each advertiser has bid on keywords.
Standard match type
A keyword matching option offered within Yahoo! Sponsored Search. The Standard match includes an advertiser's listing in relevant searches where the bidded keyword is an exact match with the search query (taking pluralization and common misspellings into account.)
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Target monthly budget
Within your Yahoo! Search Marketing account, this is the approximate daily budget amount you entered in multiplied by 30.
Third-party bidding tools
Third party bidding tools are automated bidding tools that work with advertisers to maintain their desired bid and position in sponsored search results. These tools are also used to help advertisers adjust their bids on their accounts.
Tracking URL
A URL that includes an added tag designed to provide information on the source of traffic to a web site, the search query used, and the advertising product or match type that generated the listing.
For example: http://www.XYZelectronics.com/television?YRAW=flatscreen%20sony%20 television&YKEY;=sony%20television&YMTC;=phrase
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URL
(Universal or Uniform Resource Locator)
The electronic address for an information source on the Internet, such as a web page. For example, the URL for Yahoo! Search Marketing is http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com.
URL activity
A Yahoo! Search Marketing account report that provides information on a given URL, including keyword, clicks, cost, and URL.
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View Bids Tool
A Yahoo! Search Marketing tool that allows you to type in a keyword and view the Max Bids and listings for that term.
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Web server logs
A file that lists actions that have occurred on your web site. With log file analysis tools, it's possible to get a good idea of where your site visitors are coming from, how often they return, and how they navigate through your site.
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Yahoo! Easy Track
Yahoo! Search Marketing's tracking URL system. Yahoo! Easy Track provides expanded landing page URLs designed to give more detailed information about where web site traffic is coming from.