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Yahoo! Now Mirrors Bing Results – SEO Reflections

silver — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 21:21:28 +0000

by Chris Silver Smith

As you may be aware, Bing is now powering the Yahoo! search engine.

We’ve been watching this development since it emerged and comparing results.

For the most part, the organic keyword listings on Yahoo SERPs match up with Bing’s one-to-one, but we do see a few notable differences.

Thus far, we’re not seeing Microsoft PPC ads on Yahoo, and the local map results are different. Yahoo appears to have opted not to display Bing’s groups of related search results or the city-specific block block which can be found at the bottom of most Bing city SERPs. This is most obvious in the results for things like “Dallas, Texas.” This is good in the sense that Yahoo’s first page remains a set of ten results related to your keyword (as opposed to Bing, where page one may show only a Top 5).

Meanwhile, Bing/Yahoo’s combined search share continues to rise, and many have been seeing ongoing increases in Bing referral traffic to their sites.

With Bing search share rising, and their SERPs now being mirrored on Yahoo, the question prime on many marketers’ minds will be: What should I be doing for Bing SEO and Bing Local SEO?!?

For some years now, the Microsoft/Bing (and even Yahoo!) SEO advice has pretty much been: “do what you do for Google, and it works pretty well for Yahoo and Bing”. This advice has held up pretty well, particularly on the general assumption that since Google’s marketshare is so large — we pretty well must aim for the greater target and pick up referrals from the lesser sources as a nice bonus where we can get them. However, as Yahoo and Bing search traffic combines, more focus is going to be placed upon differentiating factors between the Google/Bing search giants.

In our agency, we have increased focus on where there may be some factors which are ranked more heavily in one search engine versus the other. Just a few observations for publication thus far (particularly focusing upon organic rankings for local queries):

Bing may show preference for shorter URLs.
Better-known name brands appear to have more advantage in Google than in Bing. (This difference suggests that Google may be incorporating more non-link citations, such as mere mentions of bizname in text, into the ranking mix, while Bing may not be using such a signal. Although, many have noted an overall bias on Google’s part for name-brands above lesser-knowns.)
There’s a greater degree of duplication in Bing SERPs for local queries, in the sense that the same domain may be allowed to appear more than once in the same keyword SERP.
Unsurprisingly, Google appears to be doing more to normalize URLs, trying to limit dupes caused by things like uppercase/lowercase variants of the same page from diluting out in the index.
Bing appears to prefer biz profile pages more, compared with Google which prefers higher-level, larger-PageRank directory pages. But, Bing prefers directory sites more than Google overall. (This could change even more dramatically in this direction if Google’s Local Search “Experiment” goes out of testing into wide release.)
Bing may prefer to rank a website’s homepage more than deeper content.

Rand’s “Google vs. Bing: Correlation Analysis of Ranking Elements” at SEOmoz and Aaron’s “Optimizing for Bing” post appear to have fairly solid observations which align with some of what we’re seeing as well.

We’ll be further focusing upon Bing local ranking elements, and I might publish further observations in the near future.

Sites in adCenter Search Network are High Caliber

mike — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 18:32:18 +0000

by Mike Churchill

As interest in Bing continues, and with the pending launch of the Microsoft/Yahoo paid search partnership, advertising in Microsoft adCenter PPC is becoming more viable. One concern is that adCenter does not allow one to opt-in/opt-out of their Search Network Partners. Here is a breakdown of the big three and their options for Ad Placement. On all three ad platforms, advertising on the Search or Content Network is optional on a campaign-by-campaign basis. Once you decide to use a given network, however, the details begin to vary:

Network	Google	Yahoo Sponsored Search	MS adCenter
Search	Ad Display is:
SE Owned And Operated Sites	Optional	Optional	Optional
Search Partners	Opt with Search	Opt with Search	Required with Search
Content	Ad Display is:
Run of Network	Optional	Optional	Optional
Opt-in Placement	Yes	No	No
Opt-out Placement	Yes	Yes	Yes

Definitions:
SE Owned and Operated Sites – sites owned by the Search Engines (e.g. msn.com, YouTube.com) as well as the main Search Sites themselves
Search Partners – sites owned by others that show search results from the search engine(s)
Run of Network – Ads are displayed across all partner sites based on the content of the page – not as the result of an active search
Opt-in Placement – Content ads are displayed on a given site only if that site is provided by name in a whitelist, perhaps with separate bidding on a site-by-site basis.
Opt-out Placement – Content ads are displayed on all sites unless the site’s name is provided in a blacklist.

As you can see above, MS adCenter does not give you the option of optiing out of their search partners. This raises the question: what is the quality of the partner sites on which adCenter Search ads might display?

To answer this question, I looked over some client accounts that are advertising through adCenter. Looking over several accounts and over 1/3 of a million impressions, here is a breakdown some of the sites that MSN is using for their Search Network. This is far from an exhaustive list, and is biased based on the types of accounts reviewed, but it serves as a good snapshot into the high caliber of sites in the network.

At the moment, the AdCenter Search Network consists primarily of MSN properties and quality partner sites.

MS Owned and Operated

Health

health.msn.com
lifestyle.msn.com

Jobs

careers.msn.com

News

autoshow.autos.msn.com
local.msn.com
msnbc.msn.com
realestate.msn.com
today.msnbc.msn.com

Research/Information

moneycentral.msn.com
movies.msn.com
office.microsoft.com
search.windowsmedia.com

Search

advertising.microsoft.com
m.bing.com
www.bing.com
www.bing.com/travel

Partner Sites

Community

facebook.com
ivillage.com
tinypic.com

Health

*.menshealth.com
*.runnersworld.com
righthealth.com

News

al.com
cleveland.com
mlive.com
nbc.com
nj.com
nola.com
online.wsj.com
oregonlive.com
pennlive.com
plusnetwork.com
syracuse.com

Research/Information

acronyms.thefreedictionary.com
encyclopedia.farlex.com
encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com
hubpages.com
idioms.thefreedictionary.com
internetbrothers.com
legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com
medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com
thefreedictionary.com

Search

surfcanyon.com

Again, this is a representative list, not an exhaustive one. The big issue on the horizon is: what will happen to the caliber of ths list in a post-partnership world?

Yahoo’s Ad Delivery Report Helps Tune PPC Campaigns

admin — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 14:46:38 +0000

by Mike Churchill

On 10 Sept 2009, Yahoo launched a new PPC Traffic Quality report that will be a real boon to PPC advertisers wanting to track the effectiveness of their campaigns across the Yahoo Search network. Yahoo provides PPC ads along side search results for both Yahoo properties and other sites that show Yahoo search results (called the Yahoo Search Network, or Search Partners). Since Yahoo does not allow advertisers to opt out of their search network, tracking performance is of paramount importance to making the campaigns successful. The new Ad Delivery Report will help savvy advertisers optimize their ad spend.

Generating the Reports

Generating the report is straightforward: after logging in to your Yahoo PPC account, click on the “Reports” Tab, then on the “Ad Delivery Report” link under “Traffic Quality Reports” in the left-hand navigation.

Sample Yahoo Ad Delivery Report

Merits of the New Ad Delivery Report

I recommend downloading the report into Excel (or other spreadsheet) to make the data easier to manipulate. Once downloaded, the report provides a wealth of information to the advertiser. You can see a domain-by-domain breakdown of all the usual PPC metrics (impressions, clicks, CPC, CTR, etc.). The best part of using this report is that it provides a list of impressions as well as clicks, so you can identify where your ads are being displayed but NOT being clicked on. This helps in a couple of ways:

you can determine sites which generate impressions but not clicks can drag down your CTR, and
you can identify sites that are inappropriate for your ad campaign and block that domain even before paying for clicks.

Using the Ad Delivery Reports to your advantage

You can use the report to:

Identify poorly performing sites – Sites with a very low CTR can be identified and blocked. Similarly, sites with a high Cost Per Conversion could be culled.

Avoiding unnecessary impressions – Poor targeting may cause ads to display without generating clicks. This lowers the CTR performance. Sort the data by CTR and consider culling the lower performers, assuming you have given them a chance (say 200+ impressions) to generate some clicks.

Block out of area delivery – Geo-targeting is based on the IP address of the searcher, but consider that if you have a US-based offer, searchers on Canadian or UK sites (both of which showed up on the US-limited ad campaign in the report above) are probably not your target demographic.

Suspicious behavior – Sites with a very low CTR are not helping your campaign, but sites with an extremely high CTR are also suspicious. If your typical CTR is 5%, and you are seeing 100% CTR from a site with many impressions, this could be a red flag. Note that a site with 1 impression could have 1 click and 100% CTR, so make sure you have multiple impressions to confirm any suspicious behavior. I recommend culling these domains, and if the behavior is egregious (say 10+ impressions and a 100% CTR) consider reporting the domain to Yahoo.

Adding poor performers to the Blocked Domains list

Once you have identified domains on which you would prefer your ads NOT be displayed, you can add them to the “Blocked Domains” list for your account. To do this, click on the Administration tab, then on the Submit Domains link. We recommend adding the 2nd level domain (e.g. somesite.com) rather than the 3rd level domain (e.g. www.somesite.com, search.somesite.com, etc.). If you provide a 2nd level domain, ALL matching 3rd level domains under that domain will be blocked as well. FYI, Yahoo also supports blocking specific subdirectories (e.g. www.somesite.com/news) from being used, but since the Ad Delivery Report only reports on the domain (not the path), this would require the use of a 3rd party click tracking tool (like www.PPCProbe.com) or manual investigation of each domain to see where the ads might be displayed on the site.

Limitations and Caveats

There are a few limitations and caveats that you need to be aware of:

Blocked Domains List Limitations – there is a limit of 500 domains that can be blocked per account

Delayed Implementation – Yahoo says it may take up to seven days for a block request to propagate. In practice, I have seen it take as much as 30 days, so track your requests to make sure they are implemented. Submitting a domain that is already on the list won’t hurt, and the system will warn you if you make a duplicate request.

More Sites Waiting in the Wings – In some industries, the Yahoo Search Network sites work fine. In some very competitive areas, however, there are a lot of “domainer” sites with no real content that capture significant traffic. Blocking these sites can become a persistent problem, as new sites move into the rotation as others are blocked. Keeping on top of the issue is key to making sure that only the best, on target sites are used for your ad delivery.