Last week, Yahoo launched its new Panama search platform amidst much buzz throughout the blogosphere. As part of the new model, Yahoo will be implementing a scoring system to determine ad quality, which will in turn have an influence on bid prices for keywords.
We’re less than two weeks into Panama, and already Yahoo has been more forthcoming with information concerning its quality score calculation that Google was within the first two months.
In a WebmasterWorld forum post, a Yahoo representative outlines some additional information about quality score that advertises should be aware of when making use of Panama:
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.
So not only will an ad be judged on its current performance, but on its overall historical performance as well. That’s handy information to have if you’re a Panama advertising partner.
I wonder if Google employs similar methodology in calculating quality score for landing pages and AdWords within its advertising platform?
Then, I wonder if they would even tell anyone if that indeed was the case.
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