Yahoo! To Slash 10-20% Workforce?

TechCrunch reports that Yahoo! may cut 10-20% of its 12,000 staff which translates between 1,200 to 2,400 employees.

..the move is about improving the outlook for Yahoo and strengthening its position so it can remain a standalone company by increasing the share price.

In many occasions reducing workforce means operating a leaner team as opposed to “strengthening the position”. By removing redundancies, there exists remaining workers who are expected to take more work as opposed to “streamlining of operations”. It’s a sad reality corporate slaves must accept.

I met a few people from Yahoo! HK who are part of the backend team and paid search team. I hope they won’t be affected.

Blocking Domains and Continents at Yahoo! Search Marketing Campaigns

Despite reports that Yahoo! Search Marketing, Yahoo’s answer to Google’s Google AdWords, it is finally making progress at catching up in the paid search management race.

One of the newly enabled features is the ability of an advertiser to block his/her ads from appearing on certain domains and/or to visitors coming from specific continents. As I was understanding Yahoo’s Traffic Quality Center, one gripe I had was the fact that a continent is too broad to consider as one entity. Wasn’t Yahoo! convinced that country by country selection would make the feature more flexible?

The feature is supported with helpful information squeezed into one page for neophytes and newcomers who want to know the nuances of the game.

Continue reading Blocking Domains and Continents at Yahoo! Search Marketing Campaigns

Understanding Yahoo’s Traffic Quality Center

Traffic Quality Center of Yahoo! Search Marketing has been receiving little publicity as far as I am aware so I decide to try to spread the word within the confines of my capabilities.

Yahoo! makes claims that its Click Protection System strictly complies with the standards set in the industry. To me this isn’t a difficult claim to make, considering the number of players in the industry and Yahoo’s clout over the Web in general.

Yahoo! describes the features of the new product launch:

Continue reading Understanding Yahoo’s Traffic Quality Center

1. Learn how to submit a click investigation request
2. Get the latest news on traffic quality
3. Access tips and tools that can help you detect click fraud

Yahoo! Sponsored Listings Allows Site Blocking

Now, you can block sites from displaying your Yahoo! ads. Yahoo! announced it is broadening its Traffic Quality Features for its sponsored ads in an e-mail today.

We can now block up to 250 web sites within Sponsored Search and Content Match we think our ads will not attract good quality traffic.

This is the content of the e-mail message:

As an advertiser, you want quality traffic—qualified clicks from the users who are most likely to become customers. Our new blocked domains feature, planned for launch later this month, will provide you with greater control of where your ads appear. This is just one of several ways that Yahoo! is working to improve the value of the traffic that we deliver to you.

Continue reading Yahoo! Sponsored Listings Allows Site Blocking

Improve Your Local Search Visibility

Local search is a search engine that allows for geographically constrained searching. If I am in Hong Kong and would like to search for bars, I intuitively use “hong kong bars” because I think “bars” is pretty much generic and results might not necessarily refer to those found in Hong Kong.

With local search, search engines are able to determine a searcher’s geographic location and therefore identify which sites are relevant and should appear on search results. Search engines have a way to determine a site is suitable for a certain search by someone located somewhere. So if I search for flower shop, within local search I should expect Sam Flowers should be there for a search for “flowers” and Shake ‘Em Buns for “burgers”.

Continue reading Improve Your Local Search Visibility