According to the Official Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, it has been reported that a lot of improvisation has been made in the relevancy and the quality of ads in Yahoo! Publisher Network.

A further elaboration has been done on the whole issue:

So, it has begun! Yesterday, we had reported that, Yahoo! was updating its search index as part of the Yahoo! Weather Update for the month of August and that the Webmasters were feeling a lot more iffy than they were for the June 2008 search index update.

Now we know why! According to Search Engine Journal, the paid Yahoo! Inclusion program, also known as Yahoo! Search Submit, has been acting erratically with Webmasters losing rankings out of the blue.

At the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, Noah Belson of the Yahoo! Content Quality Analysis team has posted what is to be described as a detailed definition of a good click-through rate.

It is a well known fact that, the click-through rates are campaign dependent and the results vary from campaign to campaign. The CTR is also keyword dependent, meaning that every campaign's CTR would differ and would be entirely dependent on the keywords used. The placing and the rating of your advertisement also directly affect your click through rate.

Yahoo! Ad Performance Reports have, over the years, facilitated ad sponsors in attaining a comprehensive understanding about the performance of their respective ads. The Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog has announced the introduction of better tools in their existing service, with which users of the same can get a pantopic view of their ad's pros and cons. This Ad Performance Report has been refurbished with three unique additional report columns, namely,

In May this year, we had informed our readers that Yahoo! was possibly in the process of dropping its Search Marketing Program called 'Ambassador'.

Yahoo! has now decided to terminate the Ambassador program and in lieu of this decision, Yahoo! has been sending out e-mails to make Yahoo! Ambassadors aware of its decision. The same was received by us as well stating that, Yahoo! will be shutting down the Ambassador program altogether by September 30th 2008.

Last year in August, Yahoo! had introduced the Traffic Quality Center for Yahoo! Search Marketing. Traffic Quality Center is basically a place for Yahoo! to discuss its quality-related initiatives with their advertisers.

Now, via the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog, Yahoo! has announced that it has updated the Traffic Quality Center. The updated features will now make it quite easier for advertisers to find answers to their queries and get resolutions for traffic quality issues.

Recently, I received an email that turned out to be what Search Engine Roundtable has termed as Yahoo! Search Marketing Phishing Email Scam. Couple of days ago, there were reports surfacing of Google AdWords phishing email scams. Now that scam has taken a new face and the name of Yahoo! Search Marketing.

Here is a sample of the e-mail, that is circulating throughout the Internet:

According to Webmaster World, Yahoo! has updated the Terms Of Service (TOS) for its sponsored search, that has left the advertisers furious. As per the new TOS, Yahoo! can now access and make changes to the advertisers' accounts without their prior approval.

Here is link to the new Terms of Service (TOS):

http://info.yahoo.com/legal/us/yahoo/advertising/masterterms/masterterms-322.html

The TOS States:

According to Search Engine Roundtable Yahoo! has incorporated some minor changes in the advertisement layout of its SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) and has also reduced the number of advertisements shown in the SERPs. They have now relocated the position of the display URL under the description. The advertisement layout now also contains only three advertisements, instead of four as in the previous layout.

Yahoo! in its latest efforts to prove that it is still worthy of user confidence, has implemented several minor changes to its Sponsored Search Console. It is aimed at making the interaction between the console and the advertiser more informative and much easier. Advertisers will now have a chance to look at those campaigns, ad groups and keywords that are offline.