Yahoo and Microsoft recently announced their ad-revenue sharing model. Microsoft’s new search engine Bing will power Yahoo search. Yahoo (currently number two in the search game) will receive .88 cents per dollar of search revenue (for the first five years of the ten year deal), and Bing, in turn, will be powering Yahoo’s and Microsoft’s online searches – a 28% market share.

What does this all mean?

For starters, powering 28% of online searches could teach Bing a few things about search behavior that it currently doesn’t know. The sheer number of searches could help refine its algorithms, help focus search results on what searchers want, and could make Bing a formidable competitor. ‘Could’ being the operative word because Microsoft has never been very good at looking at and reacting to user data. They seem to be driven by engineering – which is fine for the back-end of the things – but the front end needs to be human-driven. Something Google (and Apple) are very good at.

User experience should be paramount if you want lots of users.

In brief, Microsoft has never been too groovy. Google’s starkness along with the “I’m feeling lucky” button on its home page and their playfulness with their logo, has always given Google the human edge.

But with the number of searches Bing will be pulling, it could teach itself a thing or two about human (and search) behavior. Will it? I don’t know– but the potential is there.

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Secondly, a well-optimized site has always done well across the boards on all search engines. While many people take the time to submit specifically to Google, they don’t take the time for ‘the others’. Now that ‘the others’ are joining forces, that might change. Will it? Again – I don’t know. I am guessing a 28% market share will make people pay attention.

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But proper optimization is proper optimization. Bing’s technique of pulling out reviews for shopping related results could drive e-ecommerce sites towards more compliant code – which is a good thing– but there is no ‘game changer’ in optimizing that I can see.

Sure – there are certain tricks for Bing – just like there are certain tricks for Google. But those ‘refinements’ in page code are small. And usually the personal white hat ‘tricks’ of the SEO’s.

Thirdly, Google is still number one. With a 65% market share it is just not logical to put more the 35% of your energy into thinking about engines other then Google. With Google-voice, Google-docs, the up and coming Android platform, the new Google OS,  the rise and popularity of social media and its impact on the public, one could considerably not think about the other engines at all and still market their services to a great number of people.

So–do we as SEO and Web Marketing Experts need to react to Yahoo and Microsoft deal. The answer is yes.

Arguably we’ve been paying attention to them all along! We might not have recommended ad-spend on their networks due to the relatively low market share, but optimizing for those engines and knowing how they work has been part of our existence since… well… since they were in existence.

What this deal means is that now there is a greater possibility that a higher number of other people are going to be paying attention too.

And reacting to that fact needs to be incorporated into current strategies and future game plans!

posted by M. Nedell 9-3-09

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