Friday, January 26, 2007

Adword Blocks Migration To Yahoo

The feature which allowed Adwords campaigns to quickly be converted into Yahoo campaigns has been removed. Bulksheet download allows clients to retrieve detailed settings on the configuration of ads, keywords and campaign configurations. Advertising agencies had grown accustomed to using the Bulksheet files and will have to change. Yahoo, themselves, openly support and instructed clients to import Adwords files.

Search Agencies and Advertisers relied on the feature to synchronize their search campaigns. Steve Wiideman, a search marketing expert in OC, told me that he's used the feature to manage campaigns for his clients for some time. “I was surprised that Google even allowed this loophole,” In fact, Steve was trained by Yahoo to use the Google export.

Oversight Until Now?
Steve and others are convinced that Google conscientiously removed the feature to stifle their competition. “I used to convert my 30,000 Google AdWords ads into Yahoo ads. But not anymore!”
But was it intentional? An why was it only changed now if the practice has existed for some time. Google hasn’t publicly announced the minor change and I’ve asked them for clarification on the basis of the change.

Google Upsetting Their Users
I would be moderately surprised if the change was directed at Yahoo since it affects users. Besides the Yahoo ad integration; the export is also used by 3rd party analysis tools and custom reporting. While the change might be a good business decision for AdWords, it does go against the Google’s stature of ethics. The export was simply allowing access to your own data. As Steve pointed out, “It's a move that will likely affect the larger advertisers, making it difficult to synchronize settings across the two search engines”.

In the past, Google has been extremely open with it’s users and clients.
The search engine opened the doors last year by giving away #1 Google search result for free to the social community of Google users. The integration of Google Base with AdWords has allowed RelevantYellow to extend even more local business data more content to AdWords and search.

Mission Control
Google mission is to collect and organize the Worlds information. Their algorithm specializes in delivering the right, relevant information.
Is this an early sign that Google will take ownership of your data?