Yahoo! To Revamp Search Results, Shorten PPC Text

Yahoo! has announced that they'll be revamping their search results page after the first of the year in order to make their search results easier to read. They are also hoping that the move will help advertisers see an increase in qualified click rates. That said, the time is now to get into your Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts to make sure that your ads are ready for the change.

From the email:

• Yahoo! will display shorter descriptions for Sponsored Search listings
• You don't have to make any changes to your listings; they'll be automatically shortened for you when displayed on Yahoo!
• If you'd like to optimize your listings for Yahoo!, begin your description with one short sentence that includes your keyword and focuses on your most important information in the first 70 characters
• Over time, we will fine tune the exact character count that we believe works best for advertisers and search users
• Most of our partners, including MSN, CNN, ESPN and Infospace, will still display longer descriptions for your Sponsored Search listings, though the exact length may vary from partner to partner

That means that unless you want Yahoo! cutting your ads off on their own, you need to go in and make sure that your ads can be cut to 70 characters without losing the bulk of your message.

Kudos to Yahoo! for giving enough notice on this to let advertisers actually have time to make the switch.