In an attempt to combat the impending slump in gambling revenues following Google’s change in gambling policy Yahoo! has taken the unusual step of REMOVING some of its advertising listings from key sports keywords. A search for football betting on Yahoo! UK will now return just 4 paid search listings at the top of the SERP and 2 at the bottom with the right hand inventory devoid of PPC ads, replaced only by universal searchelements such as image search results and Eurosport news results. This seems a rather strange attempt to reverse a decline in revenues by removing the elements that generate the revenue in the first place! The explanation given by Yahoo! is that this is a beta trial to determine whether the streamlined user experience out-ways the loss in revenue. And the impression is their appearance will be done at a keyword level determined by whether the revenue out-ways the experience for that particular keyword. Ill be honest, I don’t think this is going to get out of beta testing. Gambling has been one of Yahoo!’s key sectors and with the Google changes likely to see advertisers diverting their PPC funds away from Yahoo! naturally anyway. The effective removal of available positions on page 1 will make pay per click marketers consider whether it is worth bothering with Yahoo! at all if they cant afford to be in the top 4 slots. Well done Yahoo! kick yourself while you are down!
