As promised last week, Yahoo! is rolling out their new ranking model today for its paid search advertisers. Gone is the highest price gets the highest position model and what is replacing it is a system that operates in much the same way as Google AdWords does.
In an email last week, Yahoo! offered the following tips to take advantage of the new ranking model:
1. Include keywords in your ad (use our Insert Keyword feature).
2. Carefully determine keywords for your ad group.
3. Use ad testing to learn which messages are performing best for you, based on click-through rate normalized for position
4. Use our Excluded Keyword feature to help optimize your Advanced match type.
5. Review your current bids and set a campaign budget to meet your business goals.
Sounds pretty much like AdWords doesn’t it. While they are rolling out this new ranking model, they are still in the process of migrating advertisers over to the new ad management console. I know this is a fact as we still have one client stuck in the old system. The full roll-out of the new platform is not expected to be completed until sometime in March.
Many advertisers are concerned over how this new ranking model will affect their current positioning but in reality I feel that if you begin to run your Yahoo! campaign much like you would with Google AdWords, the transition should be pretty smooth.
What we have actually done in preparation for this new ranking model is to take what is working effectively in Google as far as Ad Groups, keyword selection, ad creative, etc., and duplicate it over at Yahoo! Our assumption is that if it is working well at Google, it will have an equal chance at Yahoo! seeing that this new ranking model will work much like AdWords.
At any rate, advertisers will certainly want to keep a close watch on their campaigns and make adjustments as necessary.
