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Okay, I know that Yahoo currently doesn’t really offer any official report that resembles AdWord’s search query report on its interface, but as I mentioned a few weeks ago, you can always request Yahoo representatives or your account manager to prep a similar report for you.

Since these reports are custom made by different people, their format and the information they provide can be different from one another. Therefore, when you request your account manager for a report, be very specific about what stats you are looking for.

Now onto the report itself. The purpose of running a search query report is mainly to see what search queries actually triggered your keywords. One thing AdWords missed out on its search query report is the actually keywords in your account that got triggered by search queries.

For example: you have the keyword tennis shoes and shoes for tennis in broad match, and your report shows the search query tennis women’s shoes, it would be hard to tell which keyword in your list actually got triggered.

Yahoo does a better job in this area by being able to provide the “Parent Term” in the report, so be sure to ask for that. And of course, you would definitely want to include the user search queries. You can also have additional information in the report such as impression, clicks, cost, etc.

One other important filter to include is the match type. This tells you how your keyword is being matched by search queries.

For example: you have the keyword tennis shoes in advanced match type in your keyword list, and you have the search query shoes for tennis triggering the keyword, the report will show the search query being an advanced match. If you have the search query tennis shoes triggering your keyword tennis shoes, the report will show it as a standard match, despite your keyword is in advanced match type.

One thing to note is that Yahoo doesn’t take plural form of parent terms when running the report. For example: the keyword tennis shoes will show up as tennis shoe in the report. Therefore it’s important to take the plural form off your keywords when you are searching for them in the report, otherwise excels search function wouldn’t be able to locate them.

All being said, hopefully one day Yahoo will start offering search query report on its interface, this would definitely gain them popularity.

Pitstop Media offers ROI based internet marketing services. If you need help with PPC management or PPC optimization please contact us for a free, no obligation quote. We’ve helped companies reduce their paid advertising cost by as much as 48% and increase AdWords conversion rates by as much as 410%. See our internet marketing case studies.