Bing Powers Yahoo Organic Results…Does It Matter?
by Stephen Hall ~ August 30th, 2010 |
Yahoo SERP delivering Bing's organic results
The Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance announced that Yahoo’s organic search results (English language in the U.S. and Canada) have switched over and are now being powered by Bing – the latest step in their combined battle with Google. The first question that marketers should ask is, “How will this affect me?” The answer to that will depend on a number of factors, not least how you currently rank on Bing versus Yahoo. Add the positive or negative swing you may see in traffic for Yahoo in the coming month, and another question many marketers will be asking — given the increase in market share for Bing-powered results, is, “Should I change my website optimization to cater more to Bing?” The short answer is – no.
Trust the Data
Website owners should review their search analytics and ranking reports to ascertain if they are having success in Google for the keyword phrases they are targeting. If the website is already ranked more highly on Google than on Bing or Yahoo and Google is driving substantial traffic to your site, you wouldn’t dream of changing that. As such, it is not in your best interest to re-optimize your website to suit Bing over a market share that is under half that of Google. If the website was previously only having success on Yahoo and all of your traffic was coming from there, then it is likely that you were in need of some further search engine optimization (SEO) for Google and Bing in the first place.
How will it work?
While Bing’s results will be powering Yahoo, both websites will deliver their results differently – it is understood that 22 of the 24 factors that make up a Yahoo results page will still be controlled by Yahoo. As an example, Bing currently provides their “quick access” data and “share” capabilities in some results, while Yahoo will be taking the underlying organic results and delivering them with a Yahoo-twist. This may include any number of extra features such as extra imagery or a NASDAQ ticker symbol, as well as their own related searches and search suggestions, rather than Bing’s.
