Paid Search: Yahoo Panama's Relevance Score

[mandy]

When phase two of Yahoo's Panama went live in early February, the new ranking algorithm almost immediately started comparing ad listings for every keyword to its neighboring listings. Only one of three things could happen for any specific keyword/creative combination within an ad group:

    * The listing became more relevant that average.

    * The listing became less relevant than average.

    * The listing became of average relevance (although with sufficient precision, there should be no such thing as a listing with a score exactly equivalent to the average relevance)...

full article: http://clickz.com/showPage.html?page=3625248

A related article:

Marketers wondering where their Yahoo paid search ads got off to may have to take a harder look at how they handle search engine marketing. That’s because Yahoo Inc. has joined search engine rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s MSN in basing rankings of paid search ads on a marketer’s overall relevance to keywords.

“In the past, marketers could bid on a particular position in Yahoo rankings, but now it’s something of a black box,” says Kevin Heisler, search marketing analyst at research and consulting firm JupiterResearch. “You don’t know where your ad will run within search results.”...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=21580