How Does Yahoo! Increase Search Ad Clicks?
One wonders how Yahoo Search revenues keep growing even as Yahoo's search marketshare is in perpetual decline.
Then one looks at a Yahoo SERP and quickly understands what is going on.
Here's a Yahoo SERP test I saw this morning
I sometimes play a "spot the difference" game with my wife. She's far better at it than I am, but even to a blind man like me there are about a half-dozen enhancements to the above search results to juice ad clicks. Some of them are hard to notice unless you interact with the page, but here's a few of them I noticed...
| Yahoo Ads | Yahoo Organic Results | |
| Placement | top of the page | below the ads |
| Background color | none / totally blended | none |
| Ad label | small gray text to right of advertiser URL | n/a |
| Sitelinks | often 5 or 6 | usually none, unless branded query |
| Extensions | star ratings, etc. | typically none |
| Keyword bolding | on for title, description, URL & sitelinks | off |
| Underlines | ad title & sitelinks, URL on scroll over | off |
| Click target | entire background of ad area is clickable | only the listing title is clickable |
What is even more telling about how Yahoo disadvantages the organic result set is when one of their verticals is included in the result set they include the bolding which is missing from other listings. Some of their organic result sets are crazy with the amount of vertical inclusions. On a single result set I've seen separate "organic" inclusions for
- Yahoo News
- stories on Yahoo
- Yahoo Answers
They also have other inclusions like shopping search, local search, image search, Yahoo screen, video search, Tumblr and more.
Here are a couple examples.
This one includes an extended paid affiliate listing with SeatGeek & Tumblr.
This one includes rich formatting on Instructibles and Yahoo Answers.
This one includes product search blended into the middle of the organic result set.
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