For years Google AdWords has offered advertisers more control over traffic quality with advanced features such as click discounts, fraud protection and the ability to block specific websites from showing advertisements. Now it seems it is Yahoo’s turn to give back to its advertisers.

Clicks coming from Yahoo’s network of distribution partners will be subject to a new feature, domain blocking. Along with this and existing features such as click protection, price discounts and continent blocking, Yahoo! is trying to improve the value of clicks that pay per click advertisers receive. All of these features are now also available in Yahoo’s easy to use traffic quality centre.

Some advertisers find that certain partner websites do not convert as well as other websites or the traffic coming directly from search engines. Yahoo’s new feature allows you to block your advertisements from showing on specific websites. By ensuring ads are only displayed on sites that produce quality traffic, advertisers will be able to use their budget more effectively.

Existing features that Yahoo! currently has are also important in improving your traffic quality. Click discounting is one these features available to advertisers. It automatically discounts clicks based on the quality of traffic coming from the partner distribution websites.

Lower quality clicks are generally cheaper while higher quality clicks are more expensive. ‘Quality’ usually refers to the ability of clicks to produce a conversion. Where lower quality assumes that clicks are coming from users that are not actively looking to buy and are only ’surfing’ the net.

A click protection system is also used by Yahoo! This system tracks clicks and search patterns across many data points to identify clicks that shouldn’t be billed to advertisers. The click protection system generally discards charges from 12 percent to 15 percent of clicks. This is quite a large percentage and proves that even the search engines acknowledge the presence of click fraud.

Another feature available is the ability to block certain continents from seeing your advertisements. Yahoo! automatically excludes traffic from continents other than North America. If global traffic is important to your business, you can opt into this traffic.

It is good to see that the big search engines are taking proactive steps towards ensuring traffic quality. As more advanced features evolve and click fraud has now been acknowledged, I imagine that advertisers will have even greater control over the value and quality of their traffic in the future.