The SEO Bible

I was just notified by Yahoo that the Sponsored Search is changing. Of course it affects the people who advertise in the US market only, for now. These new features will be rolled out in phases in other countries and regions.

So what’s new with Sponsored Search at Yahoo. Plenty!

The biggest change is that instead of seeing the top 5 bids, you would now see a range of bids -from highest to lowest.

According to Yahoo, “The bid information displayed within your current account will soon change. As advertisers upgrade their accounts, their bids will no longer be reflected in the current system. To ease this transition and help provide you with accurate bidding information, in approximately six to eight weeks you will see two new data points on the Manage Bids page: First, you will see a bid range for prime placement. This bid range will tell you what advertisers are currently bidding for the spots at the very top of the search results page for each keyword (Example: $.75 - $.25).

Second, you’ll see an estimate of your average position for each listing. Each time you enter a new bid this estimate will change, so you’ll be able to tell where your listing is likely to appear for a given bid. Once these two new pieces of information become available, you’ll no longer see the Top 5 Max Bids column displayed in your account.

Please note that there will be no change to the way listings are ranked for the remainder of 2006; they will continue to be ranked by bid as they are today. Early next year, we will change the way ads are ranked, taking ad quality into account, as well as bid. More detailed information will be provided regarding this change before it occurs. ”
With these changes, I guess we are going to lose the granularity of knowing the top 5 bids and adjusting our position.

Now we will have to try with different bid amounts, and see what position we will get. This would make it more time consuming and cumbersome. Yahoo, I am not sure why you did this move - is it to cloak the individual bid amounts, so that people bid more to be placed, and with the confusion going on, you would ultimately squeeze more money out the pockets of holiday advertizers…

Sorry Yahoo, but I am not “for” your new changes. It sucks! I thought having a more transparent model for Pay Per Click advertising was better than Google in some aspects. That’s because Google’s model is not really PPC - they give credence to the CTR based on relevancy, and we pay less if we have a better performing ad. But at Yahoo, we could tweak the bid, and be assured of a certain placement. Now this will create more confusion, and more hit and trial before you are happy with it.

If you need more information - go look it up at the Yahoo upgrade centre.

I will post more information as it becomes available and I test it out. Keep your eyes peeled folks.

Cheers,
Vinai Prakash,
Editor, TheSEObible.com