Auto Media Blog

I struggled whether or not I should post this seeing I use Yahoo for Search marketing and I am also a "Beta Publisher" for Yahoo.  That being said, what they are doing bothers me a bit-  It is clearly deceptive and in their chasing of Google's profits they are clearly hurting those advertising with them. 

Here is the problem.  I recently ran a paid search campaign with Yahoo and built a simple ad. This is the actual ad: 

www.newlexusbergen.com

When you look at the screen shot below, you will see my ad appears at the top in the "Sponsored" search results.  I am actually happy with this placement......BUT...Oh, and there is a but (or better yet a question) Why does my Paid ad show up in the "Organic" results as well?  It shows up as the #3 organic result.  And guess what, it is NOT an organic result.  There are NO Meta description tags in New-Lexus.Com that have the ad text as part of them.  It is quite clearly a paid result cleverly integrated into the organic results.

I don't think this is fair to the advertiser for many reasons, but here are 3:

1. How does the advertiser accurately monitor ad spends that come from Sponsered or Paid search?
2. Organic results can be bought now?
3. All the money and time spent trying to optimise a site for "natural" or "organic placement is for what now....for sale to clever PPC marketers?

What are the ramifications of this?  Is Yahoo's organic or natural search listings secretly for sale in addition to the paid results?

Look at the ad for yourself and post your thoughts-

The ad shown here:
Screenshot of yahoo plunder