You all know that Panama's quality score launched this past Monday, and now Yahoo! sponsored ads should be ranked not just on bid price but also on a quality score metric. Some of our early feedback on Panama suggests that not much, in terms of the bidding environment, has changed - which serious surprised me.
But you as an SEM would love to take advantage of paying less and getting more. How can you possibly do that? Boost your quality score.
A WebmasterWorld thread has some more explanation on Yahoo!'s new quality score. YahooSarah explains:
Remember that more than click-through rate influences the quality of an ad: The quality of an ad is determined relative to other ads displayed at the same time by both its expected performance going forward and its historical performance. Historical performance data was not purged on February 5, but as time passes, the data generated after the launch of the new ranking model will have the strongest influence on ad quality calculations.The time it takes to take both expected and historical performance into account to measure ad quality depends on the volume of searches related to a keyword. Keywords with lots of daily searches often generate enough data in a relatively short period of time until historical performance is a stronger factor for ad quality within that marketplace.
And no, the data used to determine ad quality is not “purged” at the beginning of a new month.
Most of this was disclosed before, but it can't hurt to drive the message home.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
