Yahoo's Panama Update Leads to High Ad Click Thru Rates

Data released by the comScore network this morning shows that Yahoo's new Panama ranking model for it's paid search advertisements is resulting in higher click thru rates. So long as increased conversions are going along with those increased rates, the news is a good sign for both advertisers and Yahoo.

The press release from comScore notes that comScore used the click thru rates from the week ending February 4th as the baseline in their comparisons. According to the release, there was a 5% increase in click thrus for the week ending February 11th and a 9% increase in click thrus for the week ending February 18th. The data also looked at sponsored search as a percentage of total click activity on Yahoo search results pages and noted an increase for paid search ads there as well.

In the week ending February 4th, paid search clicks made up 10.1% of the clicks on Yahoo search results pages. That percentage increased to 10.6% in the week ending February 11th and to 11.1% in the week ending February 18th.

The initial results bode well for Yahoo as they look to position themselves to better compete against industry leader Google AdWords.