Yahoo! has finally announced the launch of its new Yahoo! Search Marketing  platform - 'Panama'.

"While we are tremendously excited about many things happening at Yahoo!, we are not satisfied with our third quarter financial performance. We continued to grow and believe that we outperformed the graphical market but not at a rate that met our expectations," said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!

"Looking forward, we are excited about the roll-out of our new Project Panama advertising platform. In addition, we plan to invest, innovate and secure leading positions in the areas where we see the biggest growth opportunities," added Semel.

Full roll out of Panama's ranking algorithm would be available only in the first quarter of 2007. But advertisers can request an early upgrade of your account. "Invitations will be sent in stages to U.S. advertisers over the remainder of the year and early next year. We are scheduling these upgrades in stages to ensure that we continue to offer the highest level of customer support."

The new Panama interface is a remarkable improvement with many features including Ajax and graphical interfaces. It will utilize "Quality Index". Quality Index is a 1-5 scale that calculates ranking for an ad on the basis of ad quality and the bid price.

Yahoo! invited few bloggers to review Panama before the public announcement. So far, it has received positive reviews.

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