New Yahoo Ranking Model Launches Today 2-5-07
Today the expected new ranking model was launched by Yahoo! Search Marketing (Feb. 5, 2007). As I have talked about in previous posts (Yahoo Search Marketing Upgrade News, Upcoming Changes to Paid Search) the effects of this still have some mystery. Will ad costs go up, down, improve or worsen rankings.
I think my biggest concern right now with Yahoo is their editorial process and requirements. I actually have an email into them right now asking about exactly how strict they are and how to deal with certain issues, like not having the exact keyword or majority of the keyword phrase displayed on the landing page, why they require that you have brand terms in the ad title and description(??), how they expect us to manage, move and change keywords, ads, and adgroups without using the spreadsheet (which is very difficult to set up or manipulate existing keywords).
My guess is that they drew the line on their editorial process to be able to use the ranking model and make it look like an immediate success with strictly functioning ads, not the best performing ones. The usability right now for Yahoo, and the performance vs Google(usability and performance) and even MSN (performance) is pretty low with the new Panama release.
**They need to give advertisers some tools to be able to manage an account before they start mass killing or restricting or modifying keywords, ads, or adgroups.
The advertiser mail notification is posted below.
New Ranking Model Launches Today, February 5, 2007
We're excited to announce that the new ranking model has launched
today, February 5, 2007, in our U.S. market. The new ranking model is
designed to improve user results through higher quality search ads.
When users engage with these higher quality search ads, advertisers
will receive more interested, valuable potential customers, helping
to drive better results for your business.As we previously announced, both bid amount and ad quality
now
determine an ad's rank in search results.
Your bid is the maximum amount that you're willing to pay when your
ad is clicked. You will never be charged more than this amount.Your ad's quality is determined by:
- The ad's historical performance—determined by its click-through
rate relative to its position on the page.- The ad's expected performance, relative to competing ads displayed
at the same time—determined by various relevance factors considered
by Yahoo!'s ranking algorithms.You can gain an understanding of an ad's quality by looking at its
quality index.Example of How Ads may be Ranked
The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from
this change:
Learn more about the new ranking model. Learn more about the quality index.
Five Things to do to Take Advantage of the New Ranking Model
To take advantage of the new ranking model, you should:
- Include keywords in your ads (use our Insert Keyword feature).
- Choose keywords for each ad group carefully.
- Use ad testing.
- Use Excluded Words to optimize your Advanced match type ads.
- Review your current bids and set a campaign budget to meet your
business goals.For more details, please click here.
Important Note on Forecasting
Starting today, February 5, with the roll-out of the new ranking
model, we will offer several tools to use in making bidding
decisions. However, there will be a seven- to ten-day transition
period during which the "Estimated Clicks per Bid" forecasting tool
will begin to accumulate data from the new ranking model in order to
provide more recent historical traffic estimates. After these seven
to ten days, you can have greater confidence in using this tool. In
the meantime, we recommend that you use the "Bid Range for Top
Positions" information to help guide your bidding decisions.
~Steve
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