Posted on January 25, 2007
Yahoo PPC Soon to Use Ad Quality Score
BY BEN CASTELLI
Yahoo Search Marketing recently announced that starting February 5th, an ad quality score will be combined with the bid amount to determine an ads rank in search results. Their current model ranks ads based solely on bid amount. Yahoo states that their reasoning behind the switch is so "advertisers spend less time in bidding wars and more time creating more relevant and effective ads."
If the idea of a quality score sounds familiar, it is because Google has been using a similar method for quite a while to determine ad rank and minimum bid prices. In fact Yahoo recently updated its entire sponsored search system to be more like Google, so it is not surprising that they are following Google's suit and incorporating a quality score.
I was curious if Yahoo, like Google would periodically visit landing pages, look for relevant content to you keywords and factor that into the quality score? The answer for now is no. I spoke with a Yahoo rep and they stated that the landing page will only be viewed once during the approval process, and the quality score would be determined by the relevancy of ad text to keywords and click through rates compared to your competition. This means it will be important to have all of your keywords broken out into very specific ad groups.
I expect (and hope) Yahoo will eventually change their methodology to periodically visit the landing pages of ads. This is a great way to ensure relevancy for its users and overall keep pace with Google.
