Microsoft and Yahoo Seal the Deal on Their Agreement
According to Marketing Pilgrim, Microsoft and Yahoo are one step closer to the search deal they first announced in July. The terms of this huge deal received final approval from the two important parties; Microsoft and Yahoo.
Some people are questioning if the Department of Justice is going to scrutinize this deal, such as they did with threats of anti-trust actions with the Seach Ad Deal between Google and Yahoo last year. The big question is should the DOJ treat Microsoft and Yahoo differently since they’re not the dominant search engine? Fof now we’ll just have to wait and find out.
November 2009 Search Engine Results Are In
The Search Engine Rankings are in for November and according to Hitwise.com, Google’s at a whopping 71.57% and actually rose 1% from October. Yahoo went down 5% to 15.39% of total searches, Bing went down 2% to 9.34%, and Ask actually rose 1% to 2.65% of total searches.
Google AdSense Now Allowing Publishers to Search for Ads
Google announced that as an ongoing effort to increase the functionality of their new AdSense Interface, the ability to search for ads in now in the Ad Review Center. This option is currently available to a limited number of publishers using the new AdSense Interface and they’re working on making it available to more publishers in the coming months.
This new search feature has been designed to improve your efficiency when finding ads to review. You can now search for these ads by keyword, display URL, or destination URL. In addition, you’re also able to search for AdSense ads across multiple AdSense products such as AdSense for mobile content, AdSense for Feeds, and specify whether you’d like to view allowed, block, or new ads.
Yahoo Search Marketing to Release New Product Enhancements and Reporting Features
Yahoo announced that as a part of their ongoing effort to increase the transparency of your ads and the performance of your traffic, new product enhancements will be available.
The first enhancement is the ability to enable campaigns or ad groups to specifically receive traffic from Yahoo Search, Yahoo Search Partners, or both. If you decide to set up campaigns or ad groups to receive traffic from both networks, you will have the ability to fine-tune your bids by applying discounts or premiums on the Yahoo Search Partner traffic. This initiative is expected to be available in the U.S. market in early Q1 2010.
New Tools & Reporting Features
Yahoo suggests you start becoming familiar with the following tools to get the most out of this new feature.
Ad Delivery Report – Provides Insight into where your ads are showing on the various Yahoo Search Partner sites, pricing by Partner, and domain-level performance.
Blocked Domains – Allowing the ability to block up to 500 domains that aren’t profitable for your search initiatives.
Conversion-Only Analytics – This tool allows you to track conversion events by domain, and record revenue that might be associated with a transaction.
Like Yahoo mentioned, I would start getting familiar with these tool in anticipation of the new product enhancements coming soon. If you’d like they’re giving a webinar on these on January 7th.
By Jerrold Burke
Paid Search Analyst
Sources:
http://www.hitwise.com/us/press-center/press-releases/google-searches-nov-09/?j=13538724&[email protected]&l=1771711_HTML&u=160071899&mid=34732&jb=0
http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/12/microsoft-and-yahoo-seal-the-deal.html
http://adsense.blogspot.com/2009/12/search-for-ads-in-ad-review-center.html
http://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/screenref/1355499.html
