"comScore Data Show Yahoo!’s New Ranking Model Has Had Initial Positive Impact on Sponsored Search Click-Through Rates"

Dave's Comments: Looks like Yahoo! got it right this time! Their new paid search ad serving platform, code named Panama, is supposed to improve the click-thru rates of paid ads running on it's search service, and preliminary comScore results show that it has! Panama is designed to serve the most relevant paid ads for a given search term at the top of the first search results page, no matter what the actual amount of money (the ad's "bid price") is being paid to Yahoo to serve those ads. If these results hold, Google (whose paid search ad serving system has worked like this for years) may be in for some real competition.

"comScore Networks, a leader in measuring the digital age, today released the results of a study analyzing the changes in Yahoo!’s click-through rates for sponsored search ads since the official U.S. launch of its new ranking model on February 5, 2007. The introduction of the ranking model is the second phase in the rollout of Yahoo!’s new search advertising system, known as Project Panama. The study is based on the online behavior of comScore’s U.S. sample of 1 million Internet users."

Read the entire press release by clicking on the following link:

comScore Data Show Yahoo!’s New Ranking Model Has Had Initial Positive Impact

Technorati Tags:Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing

"Getting Started With Web Analytics: Step One - Glean Macro Insights"
Occam's Razor
by Avinash Kaushik

Dave's Comments: Web analytics and common sense can be strange bedfellows indeed! But not for Avinash Kaushik, an expert in Web analytics. If you're new to this topic, this blog post by Avinash is the PERFECT Place to start!

"A common theme I have noticed across many Web Analytics practitioners is that the moment they get access to the data they dive, and they dive deep.

You open the tool and they are instantly on: “how is that page doing” or “can I report on all the campaigns that are driving traffic to these six pages and measure retention” or “ I want to pull out these six pages and measure exit rates” or “can the tool email me a daily summary of all the visitors who visit my page and don’t submit” or “I have my key performance indicators (KPI’s) and I want a detailed report across all top pages on the website."

Read the entire blog posting by clicking on the following link:

Getting Started With Web Analytics: Step One - Glean Macro Insights

Technorati Tags:Business, Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Web Marketing