Overture Keyword Bid Tool Gone

In case you haven’t noticed (you’ve been under a rock as I’ve been in the last few weeks), the Overture Keyword Bid Tool is gone. As most bloggers and other SEO-minded publishers, I’ve used this as a valuable tool for search engine optimization on occasion with this and other sites I’ve been involved in developing. Thinking it may have been a temporary disappearing act, I figured I’d do a search for “Overture Keyword Tool” and the 3rd result was from SEOmoz.org. Matt Inman wrote about how it was valuable to him as well and asked for suggestions. Among those suggested was the Google KeyWord Tool via Google AdWords, and WordTracker, recommended by Carsten over at Cumbrowski.com, an Internet web development and resource site.

After doing a little more digging, I found another resource — the Search Engine Journal — that featured an interview with the Yahoo Search Marketing Team & John Slade, Sr. Director, Global Product Management with Yahoo Search Marketing. In the interview, John Slade, Sr. states that “continues to exist today and will continue to exist until we replace it with an improved product. Unfortunately, the responsiveness of this free tool is diminished due to the sheer volume of hits it receives each day, therefore browsers may time out and error pages may appear but it doesn’t mean that this tool has been removed”. Well, I haven’t gotten it to work…middle of the day to the wee hours in the morning…I get nothing. The good thing is that it will apparently be replaced with a much improved tool.

Revisit Yahoo! in the Stock Market
If you remember my post about SmartMoney Magazine’s suggestions on where to invest your money in 2007, Yahoo! (YHOO) was one of the stocks featured. I pointed out how the release of Panama would increase Yahoo! revenues by reducing the gap in cost per keyword could “generate approximately $800M of extra revenues based on the number of searches…revenues generated at no extra cost”. Well, with the recent flip of the switch for Google’s new AdWords algorithm (the system it uses to rank the quality of keywords for its advertisers), problems have ensued. Quality Scores have gone through the roof in some cases meaning CPC (cost per click) gone up meaning advertiser’s margins have gone down meaning Google’s margins have gone down. Could be a small window of opportunity for Yahoo! to adjust its CPC to come closer to that of Google’s…for a little while anyway. Regardless, it still means Panama is gaining attention…and making Yahoo! some money.

For more information of how Google’s Quality Score works…or worked…see this post on SEORefugee.com.

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