Bing and Yahoo: What it Means for Search Engine Marketing

Bing.com is Microsoft’s new version of their search engine that replaced Live.com and MSN.com. Recently, Microsoft made a deal with Yahoo.com to merge some of their operations to better compete against Google.

Personally, I’m not sure how much the deal will help Yahoo get more traffic as I’m not sure why people would switch to Yahoo just to use Bing? Why wouldn’t they just go directly to Bing instead? It appears that Yahoo is just giving up on trying to compete in search like they did year’s ago when they made a similar deal with Google, which I believe contributed to making Google the powerhouse they are today. Yahoo essentially told the public “Google can handle search better than we can, but please come to Yahoo to do your Google searches” and the public asked why should I and just started going Google.com instead.

Here’s the breakdown of the deal…

First, Bing will take over management of Yahoo.com’s paid search ads. This most likely means that once the transition is made you will go to your Adcenter account to manage paid search ads for both Yahoo and Bing, which should save time. That’s the good news. The bad news is that this will most likely result in higher ad costs for ad clicks on Bing.com as Yahoo’s network is larger than Bing’s network and this means the average per click cost is likely to be higher as the competition for bids will be much higher for clicks on Bing.com’s website. That is if both users are consolidated together, which isn’t clear yet if that is what they intend to do, but it would definately make sense to that from Yahoo and Microsoft’s viewpoint to generate more revenue.

Second, Bing will take over management of Yahoo’s search. This most likely means that if you are ranking well in Yahoo’s natural search results now, it may not matter once the transition goes through. You will need to make sure that you are ranking well on Bing.com. Fortunately for us most of our clients web sites and our own web sites are actually ranking better on Bing than Yahoo, so this change will be a great benefit to us. However, the transition is not expected to go through for up to 24 months AFTER the deal gets regulatory approval.

Click here for a full press release: Bing/ Yahoo Search Deal

Action Steps to take:

1. If you don’t have a Microsoft Adcenter account, set one up (or have your internet marketing person do it) so that you can have ads ready and take part in the current cheap ad rates. However, I imagine that if the deal goes through and Yahoo and Microsoft will provide an easy way to merge the two accounts.

2. Check your Bing.com search rankings. If they are higher than your Yahoo.com rankings, congrats! You are in great shape for the transition. If they are significantly lower, have your SEO person look into why and take steps to fix this. However, it’s possible that your rankings may fluctuate as Bing.com is new an may still be tweaking their search algorithm. Also, there is plenty of time until the transition goes into affect.

If you would like help with your internet marketing, please contact us regarding our internet marketing services such as pay-per-click and Search Engine Optimization (SEO).