On January 5th of 2009, Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) advised advertisers of changes to the YSM terms and conditions. And while we are all guilty of a little spin from time to time, bloggers included, Yahoo! spun a tale of empowerment in the cold depths of winter, saying that the main reason behind the change in YSM policy was to enable Yahoo! staff to perform account optimization without so much as a single exclamation of warning.
In the wake of the bleak chill of the January 5th proclamation came a foul wind of blogger furry – cold fingers in fair-trade coffee shops united in a chorus of chippie typing – and the battle lines were soon drawn across the boardroom table. Condemnations were posted Martin Luther style as bloggers railed at the established corporation for fleecing them with a scheme for raising campaign bids without consent or notification. Rumors began a steady churn and soon there where voices in the angry mob suggesting some account optimizations took liberties like shifting campaigns onto the lower-quality content network – an extreme violation of terms and conditions considering content network was apparently turned off within the master settings.
The revolutionary communication tool – the Internet – was soon ablaze with open hostilities toward the old guard. Yahoo!, the Atari of search engines, looked to be wounded beyond repair (yet again). But just when the tide of mistrust looked to be an all-consuming fire, The Team at Yahoo! Search Marketing emerged from out of the maelstrom and spoke the truth from the balcony overlooking the surly crowd gathered in the electronic town square. In a post entitled, “The Truth About Account Optimizations” Yahoo! personnel endeavored to set the record straight on their gift of account optimization. The tone of the post was almost holy, in that Yahoo! claimed their account optimization changes were brought to fruition because they had the interests of the little guy at heart. YSM was doing little more than giving freely of their body of knowledge and their wealth of experience. The pitch-fork waving crowd hushed and listened intently – some among them actually wanted to believe – but what they heard next was a slight. The Team at YSM labeled bloggers as misinformed, “Unfortunately, we learned that not everyone in the blogosphere understands this new program, which we believe is the result of misinformation more than anything else.”
Since the January 27th post on the Truth about Account Optimizations, a number of disturbing threads have emerged on blogs and in general conversations on this topic. Yes, there were people in the crowd who wanted to believe, but by slighting a self-empowered audience, Yahoo! has done little to correct its sometimes toxic reputation, and by signing the post as The Team, it makes me wonder who’s calling the shots over there. As far as the bloggers response is concerned, I get the bit about voicing your displeasure, but blogs are meant to be communication tools for exchanging ideas, not an avenue for slap-happy tirades. At least the moderator of the Yahoo! blog had the foresight to post the rants so that the average person could get a taste of the blind dialogue.
The truth of the matter is that most of us in the SEO field want healthy alternatives in the search engine marketplace… end of story.
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