In a move that has been anticipated for quite some time, Yahoo announced yesterday that they will change the look of their paid results (those from Yahoo Search Marketing) beginning mid-January.

A new look is coming to the Yahoo! search results pages that
will translate into more clicks for your listings. On January
18th, Yahoo! will debut a streamlined design that will make
the search results displayed on Yahoo! even easier for
consumers to read. Our research has shown that by improving
the search experience in this way, advertisers can generally
expect to see an increase in clicks, while maintaining their
conversion rates.

How this change impacts your listings:

* Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for Sponsored
Search listings
* You don’t have to make any changes to your listings; they’ll
be automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!
* If you’d like to optimize your listings for Yahoo!, begin
your description with one short sentence that includes your
keyword and focuses on your most important information in
the first 70 characters
* Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that
we believe works best for advertisers and search users
* Most of our partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace,
will still display longer descriptions for your Sponsored
Search listings, though the exact length may vary from
partner to partner

Yahoo! is taking this step to improve the search experience
for its users. By continuously focusing on delivering highly
relevant search results in a user-friendly format, Yahoo!
also gives you the best possible platform for reaching customers
interested in what your business provides.

At present, on a 800×600 screen resolution (still used by a decent percentage of the population) Yahoo results are all paid except for the top organic listing. If Yahoo has a few special offerings for that result, or it has a decidedly local flavor, it’s possible that no organics from Yahoo will show, but instead local.yahoo.com links will be in that single spot.

What will make this difficult for advertisers is making determining exactly how your listings look at the 70 and 190 character limit. It might be best to build a 70 character ad for Yahoo; and then layer on an additional 120 characters for their partners.

The paid results on Yahoo are still based around the original pay per click engine launched in 1997 (full Yahoo Search Marketing Timeline here).

Several marketing studies, search usability studies, user experience studies, etc, has led them down this path. Interestingly enough, these new limits are strikingly similar to Google. One of the major differences between the search experience on Yahoo and Google is additional integrated offerings.

While both Yahoo and Google have properties that include classifieds, images, news, local, etc. Yahoo has many offerings for small businesses such as hosting, offerings for romantics such as personals, offerings for travelers such as Yahoo travel, etc. How Yahoo maintains exposure of it’s own properties while giving searchers a wide selection of options for finding information will be interesting to see.

Hopefully, they’ll finally give in and include Mindset results.

It has yet to be seen how this will affect CTRs (click through rates) of advertisements on Yahoo and how much this will help their profitability versus the user experience.

I’ve been expecting this, and several other major changes from Yahoo, in Q of 06. Stay tuned for more, this won’t be the only significant change Yahoo makes in the next few months. They’re starting to work on their magic formula for success, and not likely to slow down anytime soon.

Yahoo local has quietly become one of the best search properties on the internet. It has allowed small businesses to update their business data and to tell searchers about their business. This distribution of local business data is crucial to the new wave of local business promotion.

Based on various verticals, the data being displayed is actually different. Yahoo Local was one of the first properties to realize that each vertical needs different display fields. A hotel doesn’t need a menu display, a restaurant does. A pizza restaurant needs a delivery area, but a plumber needs a service area.

As yahoo local expands, expect to be able to search based on your location and not see who is closest to you (the default options on most local properties now) but a list of those who will service your area - a very different algorithm.

It is estimated that 25%+ of all search queries have a local intent. This is a large number compared to the actual usage statistics of local search properties. Yahoo local has integrated very unobtrusively into Yahoo search (show screen shot of stars) by showing some listings when the search is determined to be local in nature.

Yahoo Local profiles are gathered in three different ways, user generated, spider generated, and data provider backfill.

If Slurp, the Yahoo spider, finds information on your website that it determines to be local, it may attempt to find your business address, name, phone number, etc and then match it up against data provider backfill and creates a profile for you.

The second way is user generated. If your business is not listed, then you can log into your Yahoo profile and fill out your business information. Yahoo not only allows you to have some custom information, but also allows for a small 5 page website. The website does have ads on the right hand of the page, often for a competiting business, so if you already have a website, you’ll receive very little benefit from this. If you don’t have a website, a registerlocal.com profile listing may be more to your liking.

The last method Yahoo uses to create business listings is by data provider backfill. Yahoo has some deals with large data providers to provide them with accurate business information and then takes this information and displays it on the Yahoo property.

How to Create Your Listing

The first step is to do a search on Yahoo for your businesses. If you find it, you should see a link that says [insert screen shot here of is this your business]. You can follow that link and take control of the listing. (Important: Please read ‘Hijacking Yahoo Local’ listings‘. You can lose a free business listing at any time, and there is only one way to make sure you control your own business information).

Once you’ve taken control of the listing, you can update the business information at will. There is usually a short delay as Yahoo reviews this information before it goes live on Yahoo properties. In some industries, we’ve noticed a longer wait time than others. Presumably, sensitive verticals maybe looked at closer before allowing information to be changed.

If you don’t see your business on Yahoo, then follow this link to add your business.

Important Information
Yahoo uses several different algorithms to determine Yahoo Local Rankings. The first is proximity. These results are based on the distance between a user and the business - pretty straightforward.

Another is user reviews. Other Yahoo users can review your business. This is very important to pay attention to - this is a public perception of your business. It is suggested that you review you businesses, ask your customers to review your businesses, and maybe even offer $5 coupons or something once a customer has reviewed your business on yahoo. The total number of reviews and the average star review (1-5 stars) can help your businesses rank higher in the search algorithm.

The last method used in ranking is keywords. Keywords, like in all search, matter. Keywords in your title, in your description, in your brands, in the reviews, everywhere. Do NOT stuff keywords. Not only will Yahoo possibly ban or remove your listing, keyword stuffed profiles look uglier to a user and the CTR from the business profile to the listing is lower. In addition, there is enough information at this detailed business view to call your company. If your profile does not look attractive to a user, the odds of them wishing to do business with your company is less.

Yahoo does offer an enhanced listing. This option is roughly $10 per month. I’ve not found any priority in the algorithm using these advanced listings, however, the data is protected. No one can hijack your listing if you’re paying for it.

Overall, Yahoo is one of the leaders in building a community around a local search property. Their forward thinking and success in this arena will only grow stronger over the coming months and years. If you’re looking to build your local presence, a Yahoo listing is a must.

The Google AdSense blog just published the new details on the AdSense referral program.

Users who sign up for AdSense through your referral button will learn about a great product, and you’ll have a new way to generate revenue - $100 when each user you refer first earns $100.

There are a large number of banners that can be added to a website, including some that are not the usual AdSense size blocks.

Pretty simple information, and it was very much expected.

The part I didn’t expect was that Google is also paying $1 for every Firefox user who installs the Google Firefox toolbar.

Again, quite a few different banner sizes, some as small as buttons.

No text links for either program - only images, which seems out of character with Google’s fascination with everything text, and slow adoption of images overall.

The real question though is: Why is Google giving away this money?

• Are they recommending firefox?
• Are firefox users finding better plug-ins and not using the toolbar?
• Are firefox users not giving Google all the data it collects through the toolbar, and they need a higher firefox penetration?

It’s interesting to see Google not only push a browser and toolbar, but to pay for referrals.

If you’re willing to pay for something, you usually get something in return.

• Is it uses?
• Or data collection?

Personally, I uninstalled every Google product after both the GMail notifier and the last Google Toolbar updated itself on my machines without my permission. I consider this a security breach, and someone else trying to control my software.

It will be interesting to see what else Google starts paying for in the future. How about AdWords account referrals?

Found via the Ask Blog.

Desktop search has been hot for quite some time.

Control the desktop, control the online experience.

Control the information retrieval, control the information.

These seem to be some of the mantras behind the plethora of desktop search offerings by Google, MSN, and Yahoo.

Ask joins the fray with an upgrade to their desktop search.

Quite a list of new improvements in this release.

Ask’s new management seems to keep them rolling out new features. I’m sure some of them are really for internal use, but why not give those to the public as well to increase user share? Seems to be the way their operating these days, but competition can only be good for the end user.

The NY Times did an impressive five page story on Google’s entrance into Madison Avenue and their wishing to be a player in every advertising market.

Greg Sterling, of the Kelsey group had a quick comment on the article:

Traditional ad agencies don’t generally like or get Google, in my limited observation. But it’s Sunday night, so I won’t go on.

I do wish Greg would have had a bit more to say about the article as Greg really gets local advertising, search engines, and the online world; maybe he’ll follow up with more comments at a later date.

John Battelle had quite a bit to say about the article.

This piece in the NYT was clearly written with Google’s open approval, and that means one thing: Google is using the Times to talk with the folks on Madison Ave - and Wall St. And I have no doubt those folks are reading - closely.

Interesting to see how the rest of the search engine and advertising world responds.

Google has upped the ante with their new desktop launch:

An entire page dedicated to desktop-plugins.

I still don’t use Google desktop.
The last two Google applications I installed (the Google Toolbar, and GMail notifier) automatically updated their software without my permission. I consider this a huge security breach (not to mention, it’s MY computer) and have never installed another Google application since.

However, the plug-in based system looks interesting, can’t wait to read some reviews of others who end up installing it.

Official Google Blog Info on the subject.

It Conversations has an audofile conversation with two well known people in search, John Battelle and Sergey Brin.

I have only recently discovered the site, and it seems like there are some very good thing going on over there with Pod Casting and interviews in general.

Anyway, John and Sergey - enjoy the file.

I had a chance to get a first hand demo of Google Video at the Zeitgeist 05 conference, and was quite impressed with what they were doing.

The Google Blog announces a list of even more videos available on the property.

It will be interesting to watch how this product continues to expand. There hasn’t been a lot of press, positive or negative comments, anything, about this product. It seems Google Print is taking away all the press from this one, which might be good as Google just continues to add more options while no one is watching.

ClickZ article on Looksmart’s new vertical based properties.

I took a look at the properties, did some searches on them, and can’t figure out what the big deal is. It looks like they put a different logo on each property, left them powered by the same database, put some predefined search queries (which all have looksmart.com URLs) and sent them on their way.

If I’m missing something valuable here, please feel free to comment. I do often miss things, but for the life of me, I can’t figure out what is with these properties.

ePrécis has received a bit of press lately about being the next up and coming search engine. However, ZDnet puts a better spin on what it actually is:

“ePrécis is not a program per se, but a C++ language application programmer interface (API) that can be embedded in any number of applications to return relevant outputs given a wide variety of natural language inputs. In addition to plugging into Web browsers or search engines, it could plug into word processing programs to automatically provide abstracts, executive summaries, back-of-the book indexes, and writing or translation support.”

Language application, interpretation, semantic indexing, etc have been buzz words for a little over a year now. This system is no different in the use of buzz words, however, it might actually be using a bit of the technology behind the mere words.

Full article at ZDnet.