Defend yourself from scammers looking to steal your account Though we have previously published articles on "phishing," we think it never hurts to remind you of ways to protect yourself from these scammers. You may receive an e-mail that looks like it came from Yahoo!, taking you to something that looks like a Yahoo! Search Marketing login page.

6 Tips for Prom and Grad Season My prom was a long time ago, but I've never forgotten'all the big hair. But proms and graduations still mean a lot to young folks"and the online retailers that sell evening gowns, tuxedos and limo services for the big evening, or diploma frames, coffee mugs or other gifts for grads. According to a 2007 survey conducted by BIGresearch on behalf of the National Retail Foundation,

A Publisher Corral of Blogosphere Tips You might already know that you can create some cool desktop applications with Yahoo! Widgets SDK. Well, the Yahoo! Flash Blog recently announced that these applications can now be built in Flash. How many times have you published a blog article and then remembered you forgot something important to put into the entry? On her blog, Jennifer Slegg just published a helpful blogger's pre- publishing checklist .

5 ways to integrate pay-per-click search ads with online display ads What kind of online advertising should you use: search or display? Well, if you want to drive targeted traffic to your site, build brand awareness and increase sales, you should be using both. When you tie search ads, display ads and your landing pages together with a consistent message, the mixture can help your advertising resonate with users and drive site traffic and sales to a whole new level.

Mom will love the flowers, but she'll really be impressed if you use these 8 tips to grow your profits When you were a kid, your mom was probably always after you to keep your room tidy. Now that you're an adult, it's up to us to nag you about keeping your search ads clean and organized. With Mom's favorite holiday rapidly approaching, now's the perfect time to tidy up your Mother's Day ads, so that you can help your customers find you,

Find out more about the new tools that can help you manage your bids "WIIFM," as most people know, is not your local Lite Rock radio station, but an acronym for the question "What's In It For Me?". And WIIFM is what most advertisers want to know anytime we announce a new product, feature or change related to Sponsored Search. This certainly holds true when it comes to our recent change to the way minimum bids are determined .

It's been a busy month here at the YPN Blog, and we're sure you have also had many things going on. That's why we thought it would be helpful to give you a short sampling of posts from around the blogosphere. First off, the folks at MyBlogLog announced that they recently added a script for folks who want to use twitter with their MyBlogLog. Now folks can stay updated with you while you're on the go! Do you have a company blog that you have been ignoring? Well,

We have seen countless users struggle to find what they're looking for in a specific area or neighborhood using current local search and online maps products )ahem'ours included(. The results may be spread over too wide an area or not in a specific enough area. While we have had refinement options to help users narrow by distance or neighborhood for a long time in Yahoo! Local , this required the user to make the refinement selections and run their search again.

New report lets you know how many clicks we're discarding for you Our Click Protection System works around the clock to identify clicks we believe you shouldn't have to pay for"but until now, you had to take our word for it. Now you can use our new Click Filter Report to find out how many clicks we're throwing out. Who needs a click filter report?

How to get approved for payment As a publisher within our network, you probably want to make sure you get paid for participating. Which is definitely a good thing! Well, we want to tell you about some ways to make the payment process easier for you. Currently you can choose to receive your payments via PayPal, direct deposit or check. Please note that you must select your payment method by the 19th of the month to be paid via that method in the current month.

Four lessons in how ad quality can change your minimum bids No doubt you've heard plenty of times that "It's not quantity, but quality that counts." You might have an older relative who also reminds you that "You can't get blood from a turnip." )Or is that a stone? I forget.( But even if you're not fond of clichés, for Yahoo! Search Marketing advertisers, quality"your ad quality"is more important than ever,

Yahoo! and Click Forensics team up to fight click fraud The enemy of your enemy is supposed to be your friend, right? Well, the biggest enemy of Yahoo!'s traffic quality team is click fraud, which is why we've just become friends with click-audit company Click Forensics. We've teamed up with Click Forensics, a well-known click auditor that attempts to track click fraud numbers, including publishing quarterly discard rates. The obvious question is,

The Yahoo! Maps team is happy to announce the single biggest imagery update on maps.yahoo.com since the program inception. While we've steadily added new cities around the world every month )over 500 now( since the beginning, we haven't made as much of a change in the US until today. Our latest release improves both breadth and depth. Going wide, we've made big improvements in our wall-to-wall coverage of the United States,

Yahoo! plans to change the way you monetize your site Every so often, entire industries are transformed by innovation"and we at Yahoo! think we're on the verge of transforming the advertising industry. It's an industry ripe for transformation. Especially with display ads, everything from finding the right audience to booking inventory to testing ads is decidedly old school, and not in the good way. With AMP! from Yahoo!, our forthcoming advertising management platform,

Seven tips to make sure your ad's aim is true When it comes to your ad copy, there's good, there's bad, and"I know this all too well"there's sometimes ugly . Like the desperadoes in the old westerns, the latter need to be rounded up and sent away. To help us clean up this town we call Sponsored Search, we've put together our own magnificent seven"tips, that is: Keyword Inclusion - Whenever possible,

Three ways to interact with your search "constituents" For the good of our nation, I have decided not to run for president in '08. But I'm still ready to offer advice to anyone who is. And so for all of you presidential hopefuls who are also readers of the YSM blog, I've decided to answer the question: What does every Oval Office aspirant need to know about paid search marketing? )If you're not running for president,

Rethinking the value of long-tail keywords Once upon a time, everyone in PPC "chased the tail" on keywords to find keywords that no one else is bidding upon. But search marketers are starting to look at their long-tail keywords and ask if they're worth the hassle. The evolution of the long tail The long tail" the concept of finding value in low-volume search terms got a bump into mass consciousness in 2006 when Chris Anderson published " The Long Tail ".

'and other stories from Yahoo! and the blogosphere We like lists " five reasons to use display, seven linkbait tips , and lots more " so Jen Slegg's 52 easy ways optimize your blog while on your coffee break makes us positively giddy. So many tips! Now we just have to go check the ways we're not optimized. On our coffee breaks, of course. MyBlogLog has some nifty new widgets that make it easier to let your readers know what's happening with you.

Things to avoid if you don't like "no" for an answer As you may already know, we don't accept ads for certain types of content. Recently, we have added a few categories of unacceptable content to our guidelines. They include: Cigarettes"Sure, James Dean looks cool smoking in that "Rebel Without A Cause" movie poster, but in our search listings we will not accept ads that sell, facilitate the sale, or promote the sale of cigarettes.

Seven ways to create link-friendly content Linkbait has nothing to do with hot dog "links" or fish "bait," but it has everything to do with catching folks' attention, which can make you shout with glee: "Hot dog!" )Probably not "Fish!"( Linkbait refers to content or a feature on a website that entices users to place links to it on other websites. Previously, Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz.org , wrote about linkbaiting on our YPN blog .