Yahoo! Quality Score Coming

I have been getting nailed with emails from my contacts over the last week regarding the launch on February 5th of their new system that they are really excited about.

Yahoo! will launch its new search marketing ranking model in the U.S. on Monday, February 5. With the new ranking model, all Yahoo! search marketing ads in the U.S. will be ranked by quality in addition to keyword bid price. As a result, Yahoo! will be able to provide a more relevant search experience to users, more valuable customer leads to advertisers, and additional opportunities to its distribution partners.

The quality of an ad will be determined by its historical performance in the new system and its expected performance relative to other ads displayed at the same time. Ads of higher quality will generally receive better placement on the results page.

Currently the placement of advertisements on Yahoo! depends upon bid price, essentially, whoever bids the most gets the top spot. Google AdWords has used a complex methodology that takes the click through rate of the ad (quality) and other factors to determine who ranks #1. With this quality score, the advertisers will be able to know the score of their ads in this new system code named “Panama”. They would also be able to see an average position as well as approximate clicks for the advertisements.