Yahoo Continues Quest for Relevancy

Yahoo is still awaiting approval from the U.S. Department of Justice on their proposed search advertising deal with Google, but that has not stopped them from making adjustments to their own advertising platform. In fact, some think they might even be doing it to emphasize to critics of the deal, that they are still serious about their own advertising endeavors, and are not just bowing down to the forces of Google.

Google itself has emphasized time and time again that this deal is good for competition, and will not hamper Yahoo's advertising offering. Yahoo has been relatively quiet on the issue in comparison, leaving most of the defensive tactics up to Google. Google has put up a , and their lawyers are even calling advertisers asking for testimonials for the deal.

notes that Yahoo's geo-targeting offering trumps Google's who only offers it down to the city level:

In a statement that seemed crafted to address the DOJ's concerns, Yahoo said the new features are "reinforcing its commitment to be a leader in search."

Greg Sterling, founding principal of Sterling Market Intelligence, noted it's unlikely Yahoo undertook its enhancements to appease U.S. investigators. However, he said the move may serve to kill two birds with one stone -- convincing both advertisers and investigators that it still means to provide a serious alternative to Google.

incorporation of SearchMonkey applications into general Yahoo search results. This seems to be nothing more than an attempt to boost relevancy in the way Google tries to do with their own applications showing up in results (like Google Finance and News for example).

Yahoo's criticism (unsurprisingly considering Yahoo's potentially lead to the sharing of relevant information between friends. After all, who knows the user better than their own friends (kind of jobs they cut).

However, no matter how much they improve relevancy, they still have to overcome Google - the brand. Yahoo has a brand too. There's no question about that, but Google has become synonmous with "search" for many (even as a verb).

But back to the geo-targeting. Kastle Waserman, Communications Manager at Yahoo notes the relevancy as the goal of this type of marketing. "Keep in mind the more you target, the fewer users your ads may reach," says Waserman. "Generally, you’re trading relevancy for volume, narrowing your target to a specific audience rather than every potential eyeball in the overall market."

To access the new features, this page for holiday tips, Google actually will let you geo-target down to a neighborhood level rather than only the city-level as indicated