Use placeholder keywords in Baidu and Yahoo! Gemini accounts

Starting March 2022, Yahoo! Gemini engine accounts within Search Ads 360 will be migrated to engine track accounts. Learn more.

 

To create a placeholder keyword in Baidu and Yahoo! Gemini accounts: 

1. Create an ad group to contain the placeholder keywords.
   
   While it's technically possible to create placeholder keywords in an existing ad group that contains other, non-placeholder keywords, creating placeholder URLs in a separate ad group or campaign helps you distinguish placeholder keywords from regular keywords, and less likely that you'll accidentally traffic placeholder keywords to the engine.

2. Pause the ad group.
   Pausing the ad group prevents Search Ads 360 from trafficking any of the placeholder keywords you create.

3. Navigate to the ad group you created and click the Keywords tab.

4. Create a keyword:

   1. Click + Keyword, which appears above the reporting table.

      1. In the table that appears, enter keyword text, match type, and a landing page URL for each keyword.

         Here's what to enter in each column:

         • Keyword text: Specify something to help you identify the purpose of the placeholder keyword. Because this keyword won't traffic to the engine, the keyword text will never be used to match a customer search.

         • Match type: Specify something that's valid for the type of engine account you're in. Because this keyword won't traffic to the engine, the match type will never be used to match a customer search.

         • Landing page URL: Specify the URL you want Search Ads 360 to redirect users to. This could be a page on the advertiser's site or the address of another tracking service that will eventually redirect to the advertiser's site.

         For example:

         Keyword	Match type	Max CPC	Landing page
         mortgage interest rates	exact	(inherited)	https://www.example.com/mortgage
         home loan	exact	(inherited)	https://www.example.com/loan

         Note that Max CPC is irrelevant for a placeholder keyword, so you can leave the default "(inherited)" value in this column.

   2. Click Save.
      The new keyword appears in the reporting table.

5. If you created the keyword in an existing ad group that contains regular, active keywords, change the status of the keywords to Paused:

   1. Select the check box next to the placeholder keyword.

   2. Click Edit ▼ above the reporting table and select Pause.

   3. Click Save in the edit panel.

6. Copy the keyword's clickserver URL:

   1. Click the Columns button above the performance summary graph.

   2. Type clicksever URL in the search box.

   3. Click + next to the column name in the Available columns list.

   4. Click Apply.

   5. Copy the URL from the Clickserver URL column.

7. Sign in to Baidu or Yahoo! Gemini and paste the clickserver URLs as the destination URLs for the items you'd like to track (ads, keywords, and so forth).

 

Next steps

To report on placeholder keywords, add any of the following columns to the reporting table:

• Visits
• Floodlight activity
• Google Analytics activity

You can then save the report view that includes your selected columns so that you can quickly display the report the next time you want it.