On July 29, 2009 Microsoft and Yahoo! signed an agreement confirming that Microsoft’s search engine Bing will power Yahoo! search. Online marketing agencies and businesses should analyse how this will affect their search engine optimisation (SEO) campaigns.
Microsoft and Yahoo!, as well as quite a few online marketing agencies, are probably hoping that this “merger” of sorts will put the pressure on Google and begin taking over some of its current market share. Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, is certainly throwing down the gauntlet in his announcement about the deal:
“Microsoft and Yahoo! know there’s so much more that search could be. This agreement gives us the scale and resources to create the future of search.”
As it stands, Google currently owns approximately 79% of the total search engine market share according to global market share statistics. Yahoo! comes in second with 7.16% and Bing is third with 3.17%. These figures are likely to change by the time these search engine changes are implemented but as it stands, combined, Yahoo! and Microsoft make up about 10.33% of the market share.
When it comes to online marketing agencies and businesses running SEO campaigns, perhaps the most important point to understand is that this deal does not mean that Yahoo! search is dead. Microsoft will be acquiring a 10 year license to all of Yahoo!’s core search technologies, which means that we will most likely see some of Yahoo!’s technology being integrated with that of Bing to improve overall performance.
