An Important Change to the Way Ads Are Ranked in the U.S.

Bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results beginning February 5, 2007 in the U.S.

In search advertising, user satisfaction and advertiser value are two sides of the same coin. To help create a better experience for our users and help encourage you to create better, more focused ads that are more appealing to your potential customers, we are changing the way that ads are ranked in the U.S. market. Ads in search results will be ranked by both bid amount and ad quality. This change, which will impact all advertisers, is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding and more on the quality of your ads. By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and reduced cost for your ads.

An ad’s quality will be determined by:

• Its historical performance—the ad’s click-through rate relative to its position in search results
• Its expected performance—determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms, relative to other ads displayed at the same time

You’ll be able to gain an understanding of your ad’s overall quality by looking at its quality index in the new search marketing system.

Ad ranking raison d’etre
When users engage with highly relevant ads, advertisers receive interested, valuable potential customers. This new ad ranking model should, in the long run, help bring up the value of our network for everyone: advertisers, partners, publishers and consumers alike.

To learn more about the quality index and the new approach to ad ranking, please click here. Also, be sure and check out the Yodel Anecdotal post from our CEO, Terry Semel, about what “Panama” means in the grand scheme of things.

Please note: If you would like to request an upgrade, please submit your request on our Online Reservation Page, and we will try to accommodate you.

—The Team