Baffled by Overture guidelines and inconsistency

[harv]

Overture have sent me a spreadsheet listing
a few (out of 800) items which do not meet
their guidelines and will be deleted.

These have the message

>>External Links Delete: Although the site shows the
>>products, ordering takes the user to future-world.com
>which has a different owner.

One example is for the page
http://www.supertips.com/fw/z02.htm

This is a page at my own site which leads
to an affiliate site (future-world.com).

Are thay saying that you must link directly to an
affiliate site and not have an intervening page ?



And here are the inconsistencies.

ALL my search terms operate in the same way.
Why pick on just a few ?

Ok, maybe they are reviewing accounts in stages
and more may be deleted later but I would expect
that all the search terms for an Url would be
processed together. So even more puzzling,
they are not objecting to eight other search terms
for that same page.

Harvey

[ihelpyou]

From what I hear harv, you are getting off pretty good. Most have the majority of words rejected. :)

[markymark]

I would keep quiet Harv. While I kinda agree that this is harsh as the page is presumably relevant to those searches, on the other hand....

On the other hand, it may be that the problem is this: the search for a specific product is expected (by the searcher) to lead directly to a site that actually sells that product, which yours doesn't. If Overture is enforcing this as a rule, then more power to them. You may notice that your other search terms are more general whereas these apply to specific products.

[Kal]

Oh yes indeedy. Keep quiet about the others Harv. In fact, if anyone has any listings they are aware of that break Overture's new regulations, it is my opinion that submitting these for review (changing a URL, title, description etc) will only bring them under closer scrutiny and give them a reason to dump them.

There are also cases (in my experience) of editorial decisions that are in direct conflict with each other in my opinion. For example one editor may approve a generic search term such as "widgets" for a site servicing a particular geographic region and another editor may refuse the same search term demanding a geographical qualifier such as "widgets New York".

Editors can also overturn any decisions they recently made at any point, take 2 weeks (yes 2 weeks!) to approve change requests, insert a URL THEY think is more relevant for your listing etc etc. This has happened to my clients over the past month and it has been shocking. I'm trialling Google's AdWords Select in the hope the service is better than Overture. God help them if Google partner with Yahoo :eek:

[poodleboy]

I agree with Kal and markymark. I have had several modifications and new additions rejected by the Overture editiors recently, for reasons that are self-contradictory or otherwise illogical. Similar to the examples listed earlier in this thread. In every case, if they examined my other 400 ads they would have to delete them also!!! But they haven't. So I am standing pat -- no changes, no adds. Kal -- I have had MUCH better success, in terms of actual sales, from Google Adwords. Overture is slipping away, that's all there is to it.

By the way, I'm new to this forum and it is great!

Poodleboy

[ihelpyou]

Welcome to the forums Poodleboy! :hi:

Overture's problem seems to be their 'help' has not caught up with how big they are. The editors all seem to do different things with no set ways of listing or not listing.

[searchenginemarketing4u]

Doug, you are correct. The editors do all do different things with your listings.

If a term gets turned down the best thing to do is submit it again; chances are another editor will take a look and approve it!