I just received an email letting me know that Yahoo Panama is starting to beta test the Quality Score rankings in Europe.
The email states:
Dear Advertiser,
Yahoo! Search Marketing is constantly striving to improve both the advertiser and customer experience, with the goal of providing the most relevant and targeted listings as users search, click and travel across the Internet. To accomplish this, we constantly test new implementations and matching technologies.
To help ensure we launch our new ranking model successfully, we will start running a limited test across our European advertiser listings in which the display order of Sponsored Search listings in some keyword markets is based on factors other than bid. In determining listing position, the test will take into account a particular ad’s click-through rate, as well as other relevancy factors.
The total amount of Sponsored Search traffic that we are providing to you should not change, but due to optimisation of certain keywords you may see traffic volume increase or decrease depending upon the relevancy of your offers and other optimisation factors.
As always, we encourage you to track your results from individual keywords, so that you can manage your bids and creative for maximum return-on-investment.
We have begun upgrading advertisers to the new system and will continue to do so in waves to ensure a smooth transition to the new system. Once all advertisers have upgraded, we will introduce our new ranking model. We will be contacting you with more specific information as the rollout date approaches.