Roundup Of Feedback On Yahoo’s Panama Release

Yahoo launched their new ad-ranking algorithm “Panama” this past Monday. Since then, I have collected feedback from the search community on the release. Here is a collection of blog posts, forum posts and opinion on Yahoo’s new quality score factor:

How is Panama affecting the competitive bid landscape?
As I reported, there is very little discussion about this specific question. Some very early reports suggest happy advertisers but a recent WebmasterWorld thread has a report of the first advertiser I saw who was unhappy with the metrics. Most say they have seen no changes in rankings, click through rates and conversions, some see they have seen improvements, and one said:

CPA continues to rise, conversion rate continues to approach less than 2%.

Just keep in mind that these isolated reports can be influenced by other variables not be directly linked to the new algorithm used in Panama.

The buggy side of Panama
There have also been many reports of bugs in the new system.

Andy Beal reported that one advertiser had his account deleted because of a technical glitch. Postscript: Yahoo has told me that this is not the case, Andy’s post is not accurate. This specific client was removed from Yahoo because he has been spamming. Tisk, tisk.

Greg Meyers reported issues with negative keywords, third party imports and poor customer service.

A thread at the Search Engine Watch Forums reported covered how on person’s geo-targeted campaigns are no longer running.

PPC Discussions reported that an AdWords import into the Yahoo system caused some major issues for an advertiser.

Mona Elesseily learns the difference between “active” accounts versus a non-active account and shares the details with us.

Not all bugs, there are useful answers also
There are some excellent recent posts from various search marketers covering tips and neat discoveries with the new ad system.

Of course, we have Chris Sherman’s write up at Search Engine Land named What Yahoo’s Panama Update Means For Searchers with some wonderful information on the changes.

Yahoo also has a post at their YSM Blog named Where’s My Stuff?. In that post, they explain how to upgrade accounts, the new keyword system, searching features and link to other resources.

Brad Geddes praises Yahoo’s new keyword tool and then provides some random notes on the new system.

Andrew Goodman talks about an anticipated Canadian roll out.

We even have Yahoo representatives answer questions at forums such as this post at WebmasterWorld on some of the factors in the quality score.