2 weeks ago I made this statement while ranting about some of the issues my colleagues and I were having with Yahoo! Search Marketing, specifically their customer service teams. Little did I know, my "voice" would carry so much weight as to be heard by not one, but a few Yahoo! employees... all of whom I might add were very concerned with our issues and more than willing to sit down and address them.

Yesterday, team All Web and I took part in a phone conference with Yahoo's Landon Armstrong, Customer Solutions Manager, and other representatives from Yahoo's elite management team. 45 minutes to an hour later we were off the phone and immediately feeling better about our Yahoo! Search Marketing partners. Although I am not at liberty to discuss the exact details of our conversation, I will comment on the fact that our communication issues with our district representative and the YSM Gold team have been addressed.

In addition, it appears that Yahoo's keyword automation system does have its faults and we were not the first to come across this issue. To bring everybody up to speed, this is the process of submitting search terms to YSM so that, as advertisers, we may bid on them. Our problem (and it appears a lot of other people's problem) is that the system would decline a large number of our submissions for reasons that just didn't fit the bill.

Yahoo!, in our conference call, had no problems acknowledging this issue and even commented that solutions would soon be in place to correct it. They could not disclose specific information as to when the problem would be solved, but it's just nice to know that the problem does exist, they are aware of it, and it will be taken care of shortly.

The question now remains though... will we receive and continue to receive the level of assistance needed to manage our Pay Per Click accounts or will our issues just be "scribbled down in a black notebook", as they have been before, and forgotten about. I, being the optimist, believe things will be different this time for the simple reason that it was Yahoo! Search marketing who went out of their way to contact us and to address our problems. I guess only time will tell.

Furthermore, I'd like to take this moment and thank Landon and his team for their willingness to chat with us. I'm glad that we could solve our differences and I look forward to our future.