We all knew it was coming. With the announcement of a merger last year, searchers and advertisers alike awaited anxiously to find out the details of what could be one of the largest acquisitions in Internet history. The partnership between the much-anticipated Bing and the old-time favorite Yahoo! caused Internet marketers to begin re-thinking long-term search strategy in an effort to appease the now 30% market shareholders. But what exactly will change?
First of all, Yahoo! results will now be fully powered by the Bing search engine. This is important because Yahoo! has always been a human-edited directory. You originally had to physically submit your site to the Yahoo! directory in order to get it listed. With the new switch, the Bing algorithm will now solely handle the results for both Yahoo! and Bing organic results which will account for over 5.2 billion monthly searches in the United States alone.
The Pay-per-click advertising platform will also change. Bing will now also power the Yahoo! search marketing platform in an effort to make it easier for PPC advertisers to use a single ad spend for both providers from one dashboard. Advertisers will still need to transfer over any existing Yahoo! campaigns to the Bing platform, but Microsoft promises to make the transition painless.
Be sure to stay tuned for further updates as Yahoo! and Bing continue through the transition process. In the meantime, do some searches on Yahoo! and try to remember what it was like in the good old days.
