Yahoo Minimum Bids
Mike Block :: April 28th, 2008
Yahoo’s new system, complete with minimum bids in the same vein as Google, has been up and running for the latter half of April. No doubt, if you are running accounts in Yahoo, you have encountered the message that this change has affected you.
I’m not positive whether Yahoo was inspired by Google or whether they made the decision independent of the the big G, however, the timing is certainly coincidental. Yahoo has been running Google AdWords ads with some real success and so it wouldn’t be crazy to think that Yahoo might start to look a little bit more like Google, if only coincidentally. What is interesting, though, is that the Yahoo minimum bid system seems to make a heck of a lot more sense than the Google system which often requires bids of $1.00, $5.00 or even $10.00 in order for a keyword’s ad to go live. So far, I haven’t seen anything that didn’t look at least somewhat reasonable from Yahoo’s system.
Search Engine Land, a personal favorite news source of mine, weighed in on Yahoo’s minimum bid system as it differs from Google’s and which best practices to enact while dealing with this new system. The article is highly informative and thorough and serves as a nice tool for anyone confused by the new order.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure how big of an effect Yahoo’s minimum bidding requirements are going to have on the final search marketing product. It might serve to cut some of the fat in the system (e.g. users that are inattentive to their Yahoo campaigns or users that will bid on anything, provided that they can get $0.10 clicks), or it might just be a way for Yahoo to make more money. What I do applaud, though, is that, at the very least, Yahoo is seemingly making an effort to improve the quality of their user experience, which has always been a hallmark of Google’s success with AdWords.
Yahoo as a company has a lot of work to do in general in order to stay competitive with Google; therefore, just about any news of change is likely good news. It’s refreshing to see that they are embracing rather than ignoring the need for this change.
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April 29th, 2008 at 9:36 am
Couldn’t agree more with the idea of Yahoo embracing change. Nothing is more frustrating than when they know what they need to fix, yet still ignore the notion of getting to it. This definitely seems like a step in the right direction; now let’s just see how it pans out over a longer period of time.
April 29th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
I hope that Yahoo! was inspired by Google. I don’t know why Yahoo! has not taken more ideas from Google relative to making improvements on their paid search user interface. Google is without a doubt the most user friendly interface today, but it is by no means perfect. Why not take some of the things that are working for Google, improve upon them and then use them to boost the quality of your own paid search interface. Seems like a slam dunk to me, but I’m not a multi-billion dollar company I guess…
April 30th, 2008 at 11:28 am
I will say the move is very interesting. However, the minimum bids on certain abstract and random keywords doesn’t seem to follow a sensible pattern like Google’s does. I can’t quite tell if these keywords simply have extensive competition in Yahoo or if I’m so used to focusing on Google I’ve lost touch with recurring patterns in Yahoo.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:35 am
I am so glad that Yahoo! has decided to step it up to the plate! I feel this change will significantly improve the quality of the Yahoo! search engine site. I can only hope that this change will ignite more advantageous changes in the future.
May 9th, 2008 at 12:45 pm
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