Yahoo! Organic Search Results, Now Powered by Bing

A Big Part of the Search Alliance Promise is Complete

Yahoo! Search senior vice president Shashi Seth announced today that a key milestone in the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance has been achieved: Bing now powers 100 percent of Yahoo’s organic (or natural) search results.  Apparently this is the case now for both the desktop product and mobile.

“Yahoo! Web, Image, and Video search experiences on both desktop and mobile devices are now powered by the Microsoft platform in the US and Canada (English), with more markets to come,” said Seth. “The speed in which this was completed is a testament to the great work and partnership between a number of Yahoo! and Microsoft employees, the ranks of which are numerous.”

Earlier this month, Yahoo! and Microsoft representatives reported that the transition was underway and that just about…

Notice: Yahoo! Scheduled Maintenance

We’re been alerted by Yahoo! Search that its systems will be down due to scheduled maintenance on Wednesday, July 21, from 6:30 pm PDT and ending Thursday, July 22, at 8:00 am PDT.  As a result, there will be a delay in the display of current performance statistics for any campaigns Yield Software customers may be running in Yahoo! Search via the Yield Web Marketing Suite.  The delay will not exceed 24 hours following the close of Yahoo! Search’s scheduled maintenance period.  There will be no loss of data or reporting information as a result of this scheduled maintenance, only a delay in displaying most current statistics.  If you have any questions or concerns, do immediately contact Customer Support here at Yield Software.

Choosing the Right Search Engine for Your PPC Ads

Sometimes the Road Less Traveled is Best

We often get questions from customers about which search engines would be best to run their search ads on. What search engines, they often ask, present the road most likely to get them to advertising success?  While in most instances the answer is “optimize across all three major search engines to get at the best possible results”, for some businesses it may make sense to focus on alternative strategies.  But how?

In order to answer this question, let’s think about what you are looking for in a search engine and what pay-per-click (PPC) advertising objectives you’re trying to reach. The answer usually includes some variation of the following:

You want…

exposure and results – leads, sales, strong word-of-mouth, etc.

at an…

affordable cost-per-click and a profitable return on investment.

I’m sure it’s not breaking news,…

It’s New to You Series: Setting up PPC Campaigns

Best Practice Tips for Newbies

Whether you run pay-per-click (PPC) ads on Google only or across the three major U.S. search engines (including Yahoo! Search and Microsoft’s Bing until the two merge their platforms), setting up a pay-per-click campaign is fairly straight-forward. That is, until you have the campaign up and running and realize you’re shelling out a ton of money for little or no return.

Because we work so often with small and mid-sized businesses just beginning to dip their toes into the PPC waters, we’re introducing a new series — the “It’s New to You” Series — and we’ll be covering how to set up a campaign for the first time, including methods for getting started, making keyword lists, developing your first ads, setting up groups, and how to focus on keywords in each group.

There are a number…

How Safe are Your PPC Links?

Anti-Spyware & Anti-Virus Programs “Rate” Your Links

More and more people are using a couple of anti-spyware / anti-virus programs that alert Web searchers whenever a search result link is considered “unsafe.”

By “unsafe” I mean that the link goes to a landing page or website where nefarious activities take place: the searcher’s machine is infected with a virus, Trojan, worm, malware, etc. These programs also alert searchers whenever a website is invading their privacy, the site’s shopping cart is “unreliable” or the company inundates them with spam.

One such program is AVG, the free anti-virus, anti-spyware program. It places a little red, yellow, or green icon next to each search result in order to alert the searcher if it’s safe to click on the link. And, users of Mozilla’s Firefox browser can also add a plug-in called…