A Look Into The Yahoo-Bing Deal
The recent deal between Bing and Yahoo! have caused quite a stir in the online community lately. Many website operators have expressed their worries regarding the agreement, fearing that the set-up might adversely affect their status in the search engine’s directory. Users have also expressed their concerns regarding how the deal can affect their own use of Yahoo’s search engine.
For those not familiar with the issue, the deal was sealed between the two companies in March of this year but was announced only in July. The deal is a ten year agreement in which Bing would be the one powering up Yahoo! Search’s directory. This means that what you see in Yahoo’s search results would, in fact, be determined using Bing’s own set of search algorithms.
This does indeed have a great effect on web page rankings as Bing and Yahoo use drastically different algorithms. And since Bing will be the one at the helm, it will be most likely that the website you see on the top of the list is the one prepared by Bing and not Yahoo itself. Thus, by the time this is implemented, you will be likely surprised that the most popular site before the shift is now totally different.
This can cause SEOs a serious problem, as most have not really set out their strategies for Bing, considering its small market share (around 7%). Thus, if website owners want to get a good ranking in the new setup, they might as well start optimizing for Bing today. But they do have plenty of time to work on this one, as experts predict that the effect won’t be noticed until after two years.
The expected change in rankings is also being closely monitored by users. As have been mentioned above, users might find it difficult searching for their favorite sites once the deal is up, especially if these aren’t optimized to Bing. However, considering Google’s market share (which is likely caused this deal to begin with) and the “if you can’t find it in Yahoo, look in Google” mentality that many users have, this is unlikely to cause any serious impact.
However, there is a much larger picture that website owners and users will have to look at. As you already know, Microsoft is a large company which sells many products. And since Bing is owned by Microsoft, there are fears by many that the Bing-Yahoo deal is likely to benefit Microsoft by having a larger area to promote their goods. Some people also believe that Microsoft will be able to get popular competitors off the first page by controlling Yahoo searches. This can be very problematic, especially to providers and users of freeware, which Microsoft has a rather antagonistic history with.
This is not to say that these things are actually going to happen. Rather, these are speculations made by many parties concerned, based on their experiences wit these two companies. We won’t if this is indeed true until the deal is actually set into motion. But until then, we might as well keep our fingers crossed.