About Yahoo! Search Marketing

Yahoo! Search Marketing (YSM) once used a straight bidding system, but since the Panama update, YSM switched to a quality based system. It works similar to Google AdWords, using ad text to predict performance and historical clickthrough rates to adjust quality scores. Basically, you want to repeat the keywords you’re bidding on in the text of the ads circulating for them.

YSM Matching

YSM has two match types: standard and advanced. Standard match shows ads for an exact match, singular/plural variations, and common misspellings. Advanced match is like broad match in AdWords, showing ads for expanded variations of keyphrases. Excluded words can be included to further narrow the span of advanced match.

Tools

YSM is developing tools similar to AdWords’ tools all the time. The two most interesting tools are the bulk upload tool for larger, higher budget accounts and the bid viewer. The bid viewer shows a range of bids for the top three positions, showing you how high at least a couple competitors are bidding. AdWords doesn’t reveal competitors’ bids. The bulk upload tool works in place of the AdWords Desktop Editor. Bulk changes are made in spreadsheets that are then uploaded, rather than inside an application.