If you are advertising over at Yahoo! Search Marketing, it is important you are aware of the changes coming up with how the sponsored listings descriptions will be handled. The Yahoo's Search Marketing blog has an excellent write up named Think Short where they describe that the descriptions of the ads, in June of this year will default to 70 characters.
Any ad changes made in May of this year will require you to enter in a short description. If you do not make an ad change in May, then Yahoo! will cut your long description down from 190 characters to the 70 character requirement.
YahooPete has posted this information at both Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.
Starting in May 2007 we will require short descriptions for ALL new or modified ads in our new advertising system.Starting in June 2007 Yahoo! Search will only show short descriptions or up to 70 characters of the long description. Accordingly, we highly recommend that you include a short description in your ad if you have not done so already. Long descriptions will continue to be shown on some of our external distribution partner web sites. Our goal is to help improve the overall search experience. We have found that shorter descriptions have been a best practice in the past.
What’s changing?
•Titles will continue to be 40 characters or less. •Short descriptions are now required when creating or modifying an ad; short descriptions must be 70 characters or less. •Display URLs must be 35 characters or less.
We’ve posted some helpful tips on short descriptions at the following link:
Think Short post at Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog http://www.ysmblog.com/blog/2007/04/05/think-short/
Short Descriptions Overview http://help.yahoo.com/help/l/us/yahoo/ysm/sps/start/overview_shortdesc.html
If a short description is not provided by the end of June 2007, we will automatically cut-off your ad on Yahoo! Search, which may impact your ad quality and potentially your ranking. So get started now by adding short descriptions to your existing ads to guarantee that your most important information is included.
Big heads up to advertisers!
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums, DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.