Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture) offers search engine ranking for your site. Sponsored Search lists your site in search results across the Web, so that you connect with customers who are searching for what you are selling and pay ONLY when a customer clicks on your listing. You can reach 80% of internet users. The more search engines your listings appear on, the more customers you attract. Sponsored Search lists your business in the search results of top U.S. search properties: Yahoo!, AltaVista, CNN, InfoSpace, and MSN.

In October 2003, Overture, a provider of commercial search services, including sponsored search services was acquired by Yahoo for a total purchase price of $1,732 million. Overture Services, Inc. was an Idealab spin off, formerly known as Goto.com, that was the inventor of what is known in the search engine business as PPC (pay Per Click) P4P, or Pay For Performance. This proved to be a fairly controversial notion, with a lot of concern raised about manipulation and the results being irrelevant. In reality, the auction model, combined with an extensive editorial team, tended to produce highly relevant results. By partnering with other search portals such as Yahoo! and MSN, Overture proved to have come up with the most effective way to monetize search. This model was later adopted by competitors, most famously Google under the trademark AdWords.

Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly known as Overture.com and Goto.com) offers:

List your business in sponsored search results across the Web. Control your position by the amount you bid on keywords. Set your own price-per-click and pay only when a customer clicks through to your site.

Increase your coverage on search results pages. Submit a few pages or your entire site to the Yahoo! Search database that powers algorithmic (non-sponsored) search results for top web portals. Placement is based on relevance to search terms, not bids, and complements your presence in Sponsored Search.

Precisely target customers near your business location or within your service area. Increase foot traffic or telephone inquiries by connecting with prospects that prefer to research online, but purchase offline with a local provider.

Extend your reach beyond sponsored results by displaying your listings alongside relevant articles, product reviews and more.

Learn how your Yahoo! Search Marketing listings and Content Match are performing by tracking the number of clicks that lead to conversions on your site.

Yahoo Search Marketing is committed to providing the best tools and services to its advertisers. Offering service levels is our way of recognizing and rewarding advertisers who’ve made a significant advertising investment with us. All advertisers enjoy the benefits of the Premier Service, which includes online account management, toll-free telephone support, monthly reporting and access to knowledgeable Client Services team. Gold and Platinum Service is designed to provide advertisers with a higher level of customer support to ensure strong results.

Platinum Service is extended to advertisers who spend a minimum of $80,000 per year (as of May, 2005) with Yahoo! Search Marketing. Platinum Service provides advertisers with a higher level of customer support and ensures that they are getting superior results from their advertising investment.

Platinum Service advertisers receive these benefits:
  • Top priority processing of search listing requests(SLRs).
  • Personalized attention from a dedicated team.
  • Professional support, including search term maximization and title and description optimization.

Gold Service is extended to advertisers who spend a minimum of $6,000 per year* on Yahoo! Search Marketing. Offering Gold Service is our way of recognizing and rewarding advertisers who’ve made a significant advertising investment with us.

Gold Service advertisers receive these benefits:
  • Priority service for search listing requests (SLRs).
  • Priority service for e-mail inquiries.
  • Priority service via telephone.
Premier Service – All Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers receive the benefits of Premier Service, which includes:
  • Telephone and e-mail support from our Client Services Team.
  • Online account management.
  • Keyword Selector Tool.
  • On Target advertiser newsletter sent to you monthly.

Open An Account With Yahoo! Search Marketing
Yahoo! Search Marketing evolved from GoTo.com and Overture.

Yahoo! is in the middle of modifying its PPC offering via the Panama update. The previous strictly bid-for-position model will be supplanted by a system ranking ads based on how much an advertiser wants to spend. Advertisers enter a bid and a daily ad spend they are willing to pay, and Yahoo! will tell you what position in the sponsored listings is available for that amount of money. Estimates of the number of impressions, the number of clicks likely to occur and the total cost over 30 days are provided to help you plan.

Advertisers can specify goals they wish to reach with a campaign and Yahoo! Sponsored Search will provide information on how best to accomplish that given the keywords and creative available. Geotargeting can be applied to campaigns, instead of merely including the location in the ad creative for a search match. Campaigns can be scheduled by date.

Yahoo! can automatically select the versions of your ad that are most profitable and rotate those more often. Contextual advertising will, in the future, be based upon your ad and landing page content rather than keywords, which should provide more relevant listings. Ad listings will no longer take days to appear; most will be active within a few hours.

The partnership network includes AltaVista, InfoSpace, CNN, and others. With Content Match, it expands to include major content sites such as iVillage, The Weather Channel, and National Geographic.
Yahoo! Search Marketing is one of the most effective Pay Per Click Engines we have used.  We have measured its effectiveness with a variety of products and found it to be one of the most efficient and cost-effective methods of reaching a targeted audience. The Yahoo Premium Plan reaches over 80% of all active internet users via the five most important search engines and their advertisers receive over 170 million highly targeted sales leads each month.

Statement from Yahoo:

The more search engines your listings appear on, the more customers you attract. And only Yahoo! Search Marketing Precision Match™ lists your business in the search results on eight of the top U.S. search properties: MSN, Yahoo!, AltaVista, InfoSpace, AlltheWeb and NetZero.

Local Match

Precisely target customers near your business location or within your service area.Increase foot traffic or telephone inquiries by connecting with prospects that prefer to research online, but purchase offline with a local provider.

Content Match

Extend your reach beyond sponsored results by displaying your listings to targeted customers as they view articles, product reviews and more.

Site Match

Increase your coverage on search results pages. Submit a few pages or your entire site to the database that powers standard (non-sponsored) search results for top web portals. Placement is based on relevance to search terms, not bids, and complements your presence in Precision Match™.