SEO Blog • Organic SEO Blog Search Marketing News

Yahoo to Roll Out New Pay Per Click Ad-Ranking Technology

Organic Search Algorithm Advancements Not Promoted at Yahoo shareholder Meetings.

Paid Search Advertising with new Social Networking factors the focus at Yahoo.

Sunnyvale, Calif., Internet company Yahoo will be rolling out a new paid search search-advertising ranking technology in the fourth quarter of 2006, a move that Yahoo promotes as a Google "monetization" gap designed to pull Yahoo closer with Google in the heated race for more of the search advertising pie.

Terry Semel Yahoo's chief executive says his company is also working steadfast to incorporate "social media" tools that further engage Yahoo CONSUMERS (this classifaction is key as Yahoo seeks to monetize 'consumers' vs. serving 'keyword searchers') so that Yahoo consumers can contribute content to Yahoo sites and hopefully spend more time actually searching Yahoo vs. retreiving email, stocks, news headlines, etc. and quickly departing to Google for search needs.

Yahoo hopes the new paid search advertising advancements will create more advertising dollars from companies worldwide. "We think this area will provide growth for our company," Mr. Semel says of the new social media search advancements in beta.

Yahoo views social media as a way to differentiate its search results from Google and generate paid search market share gains. Jeff Weiner, Yahoo's sr. vp of search and marketplace, says Yahoo will leverage social initiatives -- including Yahoo Answers, where Yahoo users ask and answer each others' questions and also incorporate new technology using the Flickr photo-sharing and del.icio.us tagging technology (both recent Yahoo acquistions) to improve the quality of Yahoo search. By blending human knowledge and content, Yahoo fells it can better answer - keyword search question queries - ex: "top restaurants Detroit".

In Taiwan, Yahoo rolled out a version of Yahoo Answers and was able to increase search advertising market share cutting into Google's dominant PPC pie. Yahoo claims its paid search market share lead in Taiwan jumped to 65%, and Google's fell to 30% in April 2006, compared with 50% for Yahoo and 45% for Google in December 2004.

Yahoo failed to mention that Google was tangled up in negotiations with the government of Taiwan during this time as a new shared portal between google and the taiwanese government is set to launch in 2007.

Responding to a question on how Google plans to compete with Yahoo-Kimo, Lee Kai-fu, Google's vice president of engineering and president of the greater China region, said that instead of putting the emphasis on PAID SEARCH ADVERTISING AND COMPETITION, Google wanted to focus and strengthen its core-competency; ONLINE SEARCH.

Unlike Yahoo-Kimo, Google would not enter the sponsored search result business, Lee said, as this would influence search precision and not serve users with content relevant search results.

Yahoo is focused on developing paid search advertising platforms that "goes beyond the browser" with an aggressive mobile search push. Mobile search is an enormous opportunity because mobile devices outnumber personal computers 2-to-1 and are direct exposure lines into search consumers in global markets like Taiwan, China, Asia, and India.

New Yahoo sponsored search advertising technology will be introduced with a new Pay Per Click search algorithm set to launch this falle in the U.S. The new technology will change how Yahoo sets the position of its "pay per click" text ads. The algorithm will use a quality score that incorporates a mix of factors, beyond bid price to determine advertisier position on Yahoo search results page. To date, Yahoo has ranked Pay Per Click search marketing ads strictly based on bid price alone, an approach that Yahoo feels is preventing them from gaining more of the search advertising dollars.

Yahoo made no mention of new organic search algorithm updates in the works and potential roll out dates.

Yahoo could substanially improve revenues by retaining more users with higher quality organic search results and faster results page delivery times. Yahoo needs to parlay their email advantages and bridge the two most popular actions on the internet email followed by search.

Yahoo is the leader in email and then falls to a distant second in keyword search. If Yahoo could be the first portal to bridge email with higher quality organic / natural search results, market share and search advertising revenues will both explode. The keys to castle as rooted in organic/natural search.