Anyone ever heard of a Placement Broker for Yahoo PPC? I got a weird email from someone today (who I'm not sure realizes my company is in the SEM field), and here is a little bit of what they say... "I am Placement Broker, I sell keywords with guaranteed on top positioning on the highly coveted Yahoo page one !" "In creating web presence these days, one must consider search engine positioning. (SEP) Not to be confused with SEO or PPC." "This company came into this phrase in March of 2004 with 386 monthly search volume at $75.00 per month and now it has over 3,000 monthly search volume and they still only pay $75.00 per month almost two years later!" I'm not sure how they could be pulling off that last claim without losing money (unless they're making it up elsewhere on other words for that company--it's a search phrase that according to the Yahoo KW tool does get more than 3,000 searches a month, and they are #1, and it's over $1.50 a click). Anyone have any thoughts on this? Thansk. Toonces51
Not sure I follow what you mean by 'browser hi-jack', but it did lead me to a way that they could be doing it... Assuming they don't have the most tech savvy people in the world, they could be reporting back to the client just the number of impressions that were delivered in the top spot (since that's all they're really guaranteeing is that you'll be in the top spot, not that you'll get clicks). So if they're generating false searches on Yahoo for the term, the client gets impressions (and the Yahoo Keyword Tool backs them up), and they pay for the same amount they would have spent before the false searches were done, since they never actually click on the ads. I checked the KW they were referencing in the DP tool, and it reports 0 in Wordtracker (3.0/day for a close variation), vs. 118.3 in Yahoo--so I wonder if this is what they're doing. I'm tempted to set up a meeting with the jicky-jack to see if that's really what they're doing, so I can start stealing all of their clients :-D. Toonces51
I'm assuming it's a program that only works on "infected computers". You sign up with this spyware company and they put results above the real Yahoo! ones.
Hmmm...I don't think I'm infected, and I'm seeing the ads their talking about. If you don't mind, I'll PM you a couple of their search phrases, and we could see if you're seeing them, since you wouldn't be infected for sure. After looking at it a bit more, though, I think they're probably just playing the odds with some keywords--finding out the searches done for a previous month, and what it would cost to be #1, and then marking that price up some and hoping there's no bidding war. I'm not sure how they're doing it for that term that increased 10x in search volume, I can't believe there's not something fishy going on. T51