Yahoo’s quality score a.k.a The Quality Index

Back on the 14th of June I was lucky enough to be included in an early batch of users who had their Overture account converted to the new Panama platform. The benefits of the new Panama system have been well documented around the web so I won’t dwell on this area, needless to say that the similarities between Panama and Adwords made the whole transition very easy and with a few minor tweaks I was back up and running in minutes.

Today Yahoo announced phase two style feature to their new Panama system which was the implementation of another ‘googleseque’ feature – quality score! Oh but wait, this isn’t Google so we have to call it something else… Yahoo settled on the name Quality Index.

From a Yahoo announcement this morning…

Bid Amount and Ad Quality will Determine an Ad’s Rank in Search Results in the UK the week commencing July 23rd, 2007.

Here’s a quick summary of the important changes:

• Both bid amount and ad quality will determine an ad’s rank in search results the week commencing July 23rd, 2007.
• This will replace the current method, in which ads are ranked by bid amount only (bid-to-position).
• This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.
• By improving the quality of your ads and making them more relevant to users, you may be rewarded with a better ranking and/or a lower cost for your ads.

Example of how ads may be ranked
The graphic below helps illustrate a scenario that may result from this change:

When I last spoke to Yahoo the Quality Index wasn’t planned to rollout in the UK until October 2007 so one would assume that the network wide migration plans are going well and ahead of target.

On a personal note I’m going to miss the ability to spike big budget and poorly run campaigns but welcome the privacy and competitive edge that such a change brings.

Cheers
Paul.