Yahoo! Search Marketing: Becoming More Like Google

By Aisling Blake

Account Director

Now that Yahoo!’s new Search platform, Panama, is in full swing it has become clear that attempts to standardise the Search industry’s paid search platforms are more of a reality than ever.  Many of the new features included in Yahoo! Panama are extremely similar to Google AdWords.  It seems that Google, the dominant player in the paid search market, has the functionality and features to which all others aspire.

Yahoo! has come a long way from its previous paid search platform, with a much clearer and more user-friendly interface.  New ads and keywords are now reviewed by editorial much quicker than pre-upgrade, with some approvals occurring straight away.  This speedy editorial process and new interface equal a faster platform overall than previously experienced by advertisers. 

However, there are downsides to the new platform, with many advertisers experiencing a considerable drop in traffic volume in comparison to pre-upgrade level.  Although the Panama interface is more user-friendly than before, it still hasn’t quite matched the very user friendly Google AdWords interface.  It still takes more clicks to complete certain tasks within the account than it does in Google, making changes to a campaign a more laborious process.

Imitation is the Best Form of Flattery

Some of the new features in Yahoo! Panama highlight the move towards paid search standardisation, with this standardisation looking more and more like Google.  Key changes include:

·    Yahoo! once allowed advertisers to have more than one ad with the same display URL on one results page.  Now, following the ‘Google way’, this is no longer possible and Yahoo! will only show the ad with the highest ad rank.

·    Advertisers with the biggest pockets no longer have an advantage on Panama.  As with Google, Yahoo! now ranks ads based on many more factors than purely on the advertiser that is prepared to pay the most.  With the Panama upgrade, advertisers’ ads are now ranked based on bids, ad quality, landing page relevance and more.

·    Panama now gives all advertisers access to an API, which allows programmatic access to Yahoo!’s ad platform.

·    With Panama, advertisers can geo-target their ads, running more tailored campaigns.  Irish advertisers, in particular, can now target their campaigns purely towards an Irish market.  Before the Panama upgrade it was not possible to isolate this market and Irish advertisers had to display their ads to a UK audience also.  However, although this functionality is in the Panama interface, it is not quite working properly at the moment.

·    Yahoo! once allowed long ad descriptions up to 190 characters.  Post-upgrade, like Google, ad descriptions are now limited to 70 characters.

Although imitation is the best form of flattery, unfortunately for Yahoo!, Google is still strides ahead when it comes to paid search.  However, it has only been six months since the Panama launch and we’re keeping our fingers crossed here that things will begin to look up for Yahoo! Panama.  At least it provides more choice for Search advertising budgets.  You can find out more on Yahoo! Panama from Mona Elesseily’s Mastering Panama: A Special Report on Yahoo!’s New Search Marketing Platform.