Bing and Yahoo (No not that Bing)

Tim Judd — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:46:43 +0000

Ever since Microsoft’s failed attempt to acquire Yahoo last year the search world has been a twitter about what would be the next shoe to drop and last week it duly fell. In the new deal the main search of Yahoo will be powered by the new Bing search engine from Microsoft. I don’t know if you have tried it but I have been pretty impressed by Bing. Admittedly my home page is still powered by Google…as is my email and desktop search but I’m a fan of the new Bing and the travel search is just excellent. Search is very expensive to do much tougher to do really well than it might appear. Yahoo has so many online leaders in terms of page views, home page users, and a myriad of vertical platforms such as Dating and News and it’s understandable how assigning the cost and aggravation of main search to Microsoft whilst managing to keep most of the revenue might be attractive.
The new alignment of players still leaves Google with a firm lead in search volume but will give Microsoft a strong second place in the race. The switch will likely not case the mighty Google many sleepless nights, but it does make the whole online ecology more interesting. Google owns vast chunks of online beachfront property, but it doesn’t have a Facebook or Twitter killer yet and now it has to take on Microsoft.
The $64,000 question we are hearing from our customers is ‘what does this change mean for my placement in the Yahoo search results’. In the short term, not much, this kind of transition doesn’t happen overnight. In addition Yahoo will continue to run their excellent local search platform and we will continue to deliver the best visibility we can for our customers irrespective of whether the searcher is using Google, Yahoo or Bing.
Historically we have always fared very well in what was MSN Live and is now Bing and we continue to do so. We typically do at least as well in Bing as we do in Yahoo and there is no reason why that would change. We watch the machinations of the search Gods very carefully; we view their progress with the same careful attention to detail as the birds which clean the teeth of the mighty crocodiles that lie basking on the shores of the Nile. We will continue to focus on what we do best; driving business to our customers through local search…irrespective of who is behind the green curtain.

eLocal Listing Blog » Search engine optimization

Bing and Yahoo (No not that Bing)