Overview

The bid amount and ad quality will both determine an ad’s rank in search results. This is designed to allow you to focus less on competitive bidding practices and more on the quality of your ads.

Benefits

• If you make your ads as relevant and appealing as possible, you may be rewarded with a better rank or lower cost on your ads.
• You can be less worried about competing with ads that are not as relevant.
• You may no longer have to compete in bidding wars.
• You can focus your efforts on what matters most to your business—making your marketing messages as effective as possible.

How It Works

With the ranking model, an ad’s rank in search results is determined by bid amount and ad quality:

• Ads with more bars means higher quality and may require a lower bid to attain a position, and/or may receive better placement on the page.
• Ad quality is a measure of how relevant an ad, and it is determined in comparison to other ads displayed at the same time. Factors that influence ad quality are:
• The ad's expected performance – which is determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!’s ranking algorithms
• The ad’s historical performance – its click-through rate relative to its position on the page
• You can gain an understanding of your ad’s overall quality by looking at its quality index. Learn more about quality index.
• The quality index is only available once you’ve upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system.

Tips for Managing Your Ads

1. Choose accurate keywords.
   

   If you have keywords that are not relevant to your products and/or services, this will negatively impact your quality index score.

   For example, if you only sell cameras and you advertise on the keyword “camcorders” to see if you can attract users searching for tech gadgets, searchers will most likely not click to visit your web site. In fact, using the keyword “camcorders” will bring your ad’s quality index score down.

   Remember, your quality index score is based on combinations of your ads and your keywords.

2. Adhere to our editorial guidelines.
   

   By following our editorial guidelines, you may see a better return on your investment and our users will also see better results. Because you receive more quality traffic to your site, users are more likely to find exactly what they're seeking quickly and easily.

3. Include the keyword in your ads.
   

   Research indicates that the perceived quality is higher in ads where the keyword is included within the title and description. You can use the insert keyword feature to dynamically insert the keyword into your title and/or description.

4. Determine your ad groups carefully.
   
Grouping keywords into relevant ad groups makes it easier to:
• Craft ads that are more specific and relevant to your keywords.
• Test different landing pages—and potentially increase conversion rates.
• Eventually, increase your overall quality index score.

For example, if you were selling electronic products, you would want to place keywords related to “camera”, “video games” and “DVD players” into separate ad groups.

Keywords	Ad Group	Ads
digital camera cheap digital camera best digital camera	Cameras	Cameras www.electronics-planet.com - - Widest selection of digital cameras at low prices.
video games buy video games affordable video games	Video Games	Video Games www.electronics-planet.com - Hottest selling video games for low price.
DVD players cheap DVD players buy DVD players	DVD Players	DVD players www.electronics-planet.com - Get deals on the all DVD players.




In addition, advertisers may consider grouping individual or smaller groups of similar keywords to get a better read on their quality index.

5. Use ad testing.
   

   Ad testing enables you to rotate different ads to learn which one attracts the most customers to your site. You can determine which message, offer or incentive is most effective and relevant—and potentially improve your rank in search results by displaying that ad.

   Ad optimization is automatically set “ON” within your account so that better performing ads (based on click-through rate) are served more frequently. You can also choose to turn it “OFF” within your ad group settings.

   Learn more about ad testing.

6. Use our Excluded Words feature to help optimize your Advanced match type ads.
   

   If you use the Advanced match type distribution tactic, and to help maximize the relevancy of your listings to search users, make sure you take advantage of Excluded Words, which are words or phrases that prevent an ad from matching a search query.