Product Pulse – October 20, 2006

Posted October 20th, 2006 at 5:41 pm by Julie Han, Blog Team

 12 Comments / Filed in: Product Pulse

Rounding up the week, we’ve got new platforms for you and a story that’ll give every developer the warm fuzzies.

• Buh-bye old platform. Hello new sponsored search!: If you haven’t heard yet, Yahoo!’s new search marketing platform is live for current users and lovers of sponsored search! What does this mean for you? Your ads go up online within minutes, and you hold the power to control your campaign from testing your ads to budgeting for clicks to targeting the right geographic audience. Sponsored search newbies don’t fret. The platform will be available for you soon. Power to the peeps!
• (Local) News you can use: Whether they’re looking for the latest report on rising rent prices or the most recent high-society scandals, residents of 16 major cities can now catch local CBS news videos in Yahoo! News. Just click the local news tab, enter a ZIP code and voila! From New York to Baltimore, Salt Lake City to Green Bay, local dirt at your fingertips.
• Have you upgraded yet?: Unless you live under a rock, you’re probably aware of Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 7 upgrade. Well, you don’t have to wait to carry over your Yahoo! settings, IE6 favorites, and bookmarks. Get a head start and go get your Yahoo! on.
• Q&A on the go: A few months ago, we launched the Yahoo! Answers API on the Yahoo! Developer Network. Well, a Colorado soccer dad snagged it to feed Yahoo! Answers to his mobile phone so he could brush up on his soccer lingo. Read more here. Thanks to him, you can find out what a chip shot is (or anything else, for that matter) while on the road.

And don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS feed (or add it to My Yahoo!) to get this Product Pulse every week.

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12 Comments Add your own

Richard Ball | October 21st, 2006 at 5:08 am

Question about the new sponsored search: Will Easy Track still be an option? That’s a feature from the original Overture platform that’s superior to tracking options from Google AdWords. Please tell me that (or something like it) exists in the upgraded Yahoo! Search Marketing platform. Thanks.

(If you click on my name from this comment you’ll see the free, open source code I use to track current Yahoo! Search Marketing ads using the Easy Track option.)

Chuck kennedy | October 22nd, 2006 at 5:41 pm

About upgrading to IE 7 and carrying over Yahoo settings. . . I have deleted every Yahoo add-in, and I won’t allow Yahoo to get into my browser anymore until you stop with changing URLs that I enter. For example, if you type “mlb” into the address window and press enter, IE should translate that to http://www.mlb.com automatically, but Yahoo has changed that function, at least for mlb. Yahoo changes the url that I enter into the yahoo mlb page. Who knows what other web sites Yahoo has co-opted in this way. You don’t have any business doing that. I’m not renewing any of my paid yahoo services until that practice is done away with.

Stanley Thurston | October 23rd, 2006 at 9:05 am

At Yahoo Mail there is an Ad with a man that shakes the hair from his chest, whenever you log in to check your mail. This is the sickest thing that I have ever seen; to the point that I hate to check my email. Please Yahoo. get rid of that Ad. It gives me and everybody that i know, the creeps!

Folks are constantly commenting on it.

dale | October 23rd, 2006 at 9:17 am

WHY DOESN’T YAHOO ADD AN ‘ADVANCED SEARCH’ TAB NEXT TO THEIR STANDARD SEARCH BOX ON THE HOME PAGE? GOOGLE HAS ONE ON THEIR HOME PAGE AND THAT IS WHY I DO MORE SEARCHES ON GOOGLE - BECAUSE THE ADVANCED SEARCH TAB IS MORE EASILY ACCESIBLE THERE.

Nicki Dugan | October 23rd, 2006 at 12:31 pm

Dale: You can use http://search.yahoo.com/ as your primary search page. It has a link to advance search on it.

Julie Han | October 23rd, 2006 at 1:25 pm

Richard: Yes, the Easy Track option will still be available in
the new system, but it will be called “Tracking URLs.”

Richard Ball | October 23rd, 2006 at 8:44 pm

Julie: Thank you!

Nicki Dugan | October 24th, 2006 at 9:32 am

Hey Chuck: Sorry to hear about your IE7 issue. I’ve checked in with our Yahoo! Toolbar and IE7 optimization teams and they both confirm that the URL translation you’re seeing is not related to Yahoo!. Incidentially, if you type “ctrl-enter” after typing in MLB, it autofills the URL — that’s standard IE6 and IE7 functionality. If not, you might consider getting in touch with Microsoft to see if they have suggestions.

Donna Roth | November 8th, 2006 at 12:43 pm

Are you aware that someone is using your name to promote a scam? I recieved an email from Yahoo International that said I had won money and that I was to contact them at Yahoo. They list themselves as a Yahoo employee. Not sure if your company is aware of this usually you warn customers if someone is using your name for a scam.

Nicki Dugan | November 8th, 2006 at 3:56 pm

Yes, Donna. Alas, that’s a phishing scam, which is unfortunately quite prevalent on the Net and difficult to combat. Consumer education is our best weapon. To learn more about how to identify a phishing scam, read more here. If you have received an email that says it’s from Yahoo! or another trusted third-party, but you suspect it might really be a phishing email, please forward it to mail-spoof@cc.yahoo-inc.com. Please include the full e-mail headers (click here to learn how to view full headers in Yahoo! Mail). Stay safe!

Jim | October 5th, 2007 at 12:10 pm

Nicki Dugan said
“I’ve checked in with our Yahoo! Toolbar and IE7 optimization teams and they both confirm that the URL translation you’re seeing is not related to Yahoo!. ”

But that is incorrect. After disabling “Yahoo Services” in the IE7 Manage add-ons section, I was able to to type NFL or MLB and ctrl-enter and go to the correct web page, not Yahoo’s version of it.

Ed | December 11th, 2007 at 9:44 pm

After disabling “Yahoo Services” in the IE7 Manage add-ons section, I was able to to type NFL or MLB and ctrl-enter and go to the correct web page, not Yahoo’s version of it.

Thanks for the tip.

Shame on you yahoo!!!