Google adds Link Analysis feature to its webmaster tools

A couple of days ago Google announced that webmasters will now be able to understand more about external and internal links to their site.

As most search marketers know, the link: operator on Google shows only a small proportion of backlinks, unlike on Yahoo or MSN. With this new capability, webmasters can get a better idea of the backlinks.

The positives about this, according to me:
* Gives a breakdown of internal links and external links. The link: command gave both in the same set of results. Yahoo Site Explorer already had the capability to show internal and external links.

* Gives a breakdown of in-bound links by page ie. one knows who is linking to what page of your site.

* This information is downloadable for further analysis as required.

* While there may or may not be any weightage to these links, it can at least assure web site owners who outsource link building that the links they are getting have been seen and included in the link count by Google {small consolation, for whatever it is worth..}.

At this time, the Link Analysis feature does not show the backlinks to a competitor site -- something which Yahoo Site Explorer lets one do. There are several search marketers who sneer the idea of reviewing competitor's links -- personally, I have always felt that it is useful and part of the process. On that count, Site Explorer hs some great value.

Yahoo's new ranking model launched in the US on Feb 5

Yahoo Search Marketing has launched its new ranking model [part of the changes to its Sponsored Search revamp, also known in the search marketing world as Project Panama] in the US yesterday. While until now, Yahoo's PPC program had a straight forward bid-based ranking mechanism, the new ranking algorithm will make it a lot similar to Google's Adwords program. It will take both the bid amount and a quality score into consideration when determining ad positions.

While this will be welcome by most advertisers, the problem lies in getting a clear idea of what actually constitutes ad quality: there is more uncertainty/ unpredictability about ad positions with this move.


According to the e-mail sent out by Yahoo announcing this rollout: "Your ad's quality is determined by:

The ad's historical performance—determined by its click-through rate relative to its position on the page.

The ad's expected performance, relative to competing ads displayed at the same time—determined by various relevance factors considered by Yahoo!'s ranking algorithms.

You can gain an understanding of an ad's quality by looking at its quality index, which will be available to you once you've upgraded to the new Sponsored Search system."

It doesn't seem like Yahoo has introduced a minimum bid per keyword [apart from the across-the-board minimum of $0.10] which Google Adwords introduced after the latter had made changes to its own ad quality guidelines.

One of the common complaints that I have heard from people has been that search advertising on Yahoo has not yielded good conversions [personally, we've had mixed results with the campaigns we've managed-- so we cannot make a blanket statement]. Will these quality-related changes make any difference to the quality of traffic and conversions? We hope so..