After announcements from Google and Bing about incorporating Twitter into their search results, Yahoo! is throwing hopping on the real-time results news bandwagon. Yahoo!’s Twitter integration is part of a new update when the News Shortcut is implemented in the search results.
Yahoo! is addressing the post-Microsoft search deal sentiment that they’ve given up on search. Over on their Search Marketing blog, they’re talking about things to come in the paid search space.
Rich Ads in Search - Yahoo! says their initial tests have improved click-through rates as much as 25%. This month, they’ll expand rich ads in search to large brand advertisers. If you do get access, it’s ultimately the conversion rate that matters the most, so keep that in mind.
Ad Delivery Report - Launched last month, the report allows you to see which ads appear on partner sites. It also allows you to block sites that aren’t converting well for you.
New Web Search - Just a couple of weeks ago, Yahoo! rolled out their new search. The biggest change was the UI, which featured a new 3 column look.
Network Distribution - Coming next year will allow you to separate bids for Yahoo! and partner channels.
Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop - Also coming next year, this will allow you to manage search ad campaigns offline. The tool is currently in beta and if you’re interested in testing it, you can sign up here.
Technorati Tags: blog
Last month, Yahoo! tested a new search that featured 3 columns and updated search results. Now, they’re rolling out the new web search to all users in the U.S., U.K., France, Spain, Mexico, and India. Image and video search results are being revamped as part of the update as well.
Within the three column look, the left hand side features search filters including the ability to refine by sites such as Wikipedia and Twitter.
There’s also Search Pad, which allows easy note-taking for searches you’re conducting. Search Pad will track sites you’ve visited, but you can also type your own notes into the tool.
From a tech standpoint, much of Yahoo!’s new search was rebuilt. The foundational markup/CSS/JavaScript for the SRP design and core functionality has been rebuilt completely from scratch. As a result, Yahoo! says load time is faster.
Technorati Tags: blog
Yahoo is rolling out some changes to its search results pages, with a new three-column design that highlights Yahoo apps, related searches, and more filtering options.
The changes are being tested with a random set of Yahoo users, and are expected to roll out to all users later this year.
In the left-hand column of Yahoo’s search results, users will be presented with results filtering options. These include links to searches on related concepts, the ability to limit results to those from Yahoo pages or other third-party sites, or filtering results based on type of content.
Technorati Tags: blog
pYahoo today unveiled a trio of behaviorally targeted ad options for both search and display ads./p
ollibSearch Retargeting for Display Ads/b — lets advertisers target display advertising based on a user’s search activity. So a user that searches on a term like “sandals” could be served a display ad for footwear elsewhere on Yahoo’s network. /li libEnhanced Retargeting for Display Ads/b — allows advertisers to deliver dynamically generated display ads across the Yahoo network based on user activity on an advertiser’s site. Going beyond standard site retargeting, the new technology would allow an advertiser to target users who visit an airline website to check offers for flights from SFO-JFK, and serve them a personalized offer for that specific flight when they visit a page within the Yahoo Network./li libEnhanced Targeting for Search Ads/b — adds capabilities for Sponsored Search and Content Match ads, including ad scheduling and demographic targeting within search. New features are designed to extend the advertiser’s control over where and when an ad is shown at both the campaign and ad group level, including what time of day and day of the week an advertiser would like campaigns to run (ad scheduling), and what age and gender they’d like to reach (demographic). Advertisers will be able to vary their bids for different segments in order to increase their ability to reach the desired audience. /li /ol
pMuch of this technology was developed through Yahoo’s BlueLithium division, which was a href=”http://www.clickz.com/3626936″acquired by Yahoo/a in September 2007.br /
/pdiv class=”feedflare”
a href=”http://feeds.searchenginewatch.com/~f/sewblog?a=oTm9IG.Q”img […] Read more »
Technorati Tags: blog
pA recent a href=”http://www.seobythesea.com/?p=1177″patent application from Yahoo/a highlights several factors that Yahoo itself proposes to use for optimizing Web pages for its search engine, according to the ever-vigilant patent-watcher Bill Slawski./p
pThe application, “a href=”http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2Sect2=HITOFFu=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-adv.htmlr=1p=1f=Gl=50d=PG01S1=20090006311.PGNR.OS=dn/20090006311RS=DN/20090006311″Automated System to Improve Search Engine Optimization on Web Pages/a,” was filed in June 2007 and published last month. It proposes a process that would look at search query logs and browsing activity of users, as well as semantic relationships and timeliness of query terms./p
pIt would break up a page into “units” of content, and emphasize those units that best relate to the most popular keywords and concepts. That could be done by updating page titles, URLs, meta descriptions and meta keywords, alt attributes for images, and headings on pages./p
pThis is a patent application only, and not a real-life service. It may become a real service someday, so it’s worth considering what that would mean for search marketers, and site owners in general. How well this idea would work would depend heavily on the implementation. As Slawski points out:br /
blockquotePSEO isn’t about trying to get the most traffic to a site for the most popular terms possible. /P PInstead, it’s about understanding the objectives of a site, and knowing enough about an audience that might be interested in what that site offers to help those searchers and those sites find each other. That can involve finding the right words to use on the pages of a site instead of the most popular words./P /blockquote /p
pFor this idea […] Read more »
Technorati Tags: blog
Yahoo is taking the next step in its “open” strategy with the launch today of BOSS: Build your Own Search Service. The BOSS program will allow third parties to build their own search engine using Yahoo’s index and ranking methodologies as a base.
Building a competitive search engine would require upwards of $300 million in capital investments, according to Prabhakar Raghavan, chief strategist for Yahoo Search. Besides the hardware involved, there is a limited pool of talent available that can create the query handling, ranking, indexing and crawling infrastructure. Add to that the need for massive amounts of data to achieve relevance, and it becomes nearly impossible for smaller players to compete.
Yahoo is changing all of that with BOSS, Raghavan said.
“This is a bold direction for any search principal to take,” he said. “We’re expecting this to disrupt the market, and that includes ourselves.”
By disrupting the search engine market, Yahoo hopes to bring more choice to consumers, while also taking away some of Google’s share. Where Search Monkey opened up Yahoo’s SERPs, BOSS opens up Yahoo’s infrastructure and technology, and extends it outside of Yahoo.
Using the BOSS APIs, partners will be able to take Yahoo’s search results and apply their own ranking criteria, creating their own customized search engine. The BOSS API is based on Yahoo’s full index of Web search, news and image search results, as well as spell correction, Raghavan said.
There are three levels to the BOSS program. The first is a self-service API, which will be available to […] Read more »
Yahoo has announced its latest search index update. So, if you see a change up in your rankings, now you know why. But earlier news of new crawling abilities for Adobe Flash don’t appear to be part of this update. Instead, expect to see those updates in the future.
“Yahoo! is committed to supporting webmaster needs with plans to support searchable SWF and is working with Adobe to determine the best possible implementation,” said Sean Suchter, vice president Yahoo! Search Technology Engineering.
Yahoo’s last update occurred on May 28, 2008.
Are you seeing any changes in your Yahoo rankings? Let us know in the comments.
If you’re seeing a shift in your Yahoo rankings, you’re not alone. Yahoo has announced that it is rolling out updates to its search index.
SEW Expert Eric Enge published a terrific interview on his Stone Temple blog with Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins, who keynoted SES New York. What makes it a great read? Eric asks spot-on questions that cut to the heart of the matter.
Eric Enge: In New York you talked about the future of search, but the thing that really struck me in the conversation was the notion of “webmaster supplied content” communicated essentially directly to the search engine. Maybe you can tell me whether that notion resonates with you in just your general thoughts on the concepts that you laid out in the presentation?
Andrew Tomkins: I’ll start by saying that characterization of webmasters and publishers sharing more structured representation of their content is exactly what we are talking about. I guess it’s easy to think of it as sharing it with a search engine.
The exchange that really impressed me was late in the interview when Eric and Andrew discuss a site’s authority:
Andrew Tomkins: Understanding how authoritative a site is, then specifically for each part of the site; what they are about, how much you should trust them and how much people tend to believe them. How deep they go; all of this is very valuable from the ranking standpoint.
Eric Enge: You could have a site that has a million links, and that has many sections like I talked about, but the tennis section for some reason has very few inbound links from third party sites. Whereas, the camping section has […] Read more »
Technorati Tags: blog