Yahoo & Microsoft Search Alliance

Yahoo! And Microsoft have announced their plans to finalize their search alliance by late October 2010. Below are some frequently asked questions that should fill you in how what you need to know and how this will affect your online pay per click marketing strategy.

Q1) So…Yahoo and Bing are merging?

Well, not exactly. They’re forming a Search Alliance.

Q2) Alliance? What is this? Survivor?

While it would be pretty amusing to see some of the major search engines battle it out Survivor style, that’s not what is taking place this October.

Yahoo! and Microsoft are joining forces in the search portion of their businesses only. Microsoft will provide algorithmic & paid search results for both companies & Yahoo! will provide support to advertisers (that's us). They will continue to compete with their products, email platforms & instant messaging systems-basically everything from a user standpoint. Bottom line, your paid search ads will be running in both Yahoo! and Bing but you will only receive one monthly report.

Q3) Why join forces?

This is where it gets exciting. Yahoo! and Microsoft combined will deliver 4.6 billion searches per month. (See graph below) This means that your ads will have the potential to reach an even larger target market than before. And with Microsoft's algorithmic & paid search results (that has already begun to show us some great traffic with a relatively low cost per click for many of our clients) reaching 11.8% more of the market share than before, we see nothing but sunny skies ahead for your ROI.

 

 

Also, with both the Yahoo! & Microsoft teams combining their search engine knowledge to develop one search platform that will be the easiest, most user friendly search engine available, they will be able to create a better search experience for their users.

Q4) What if I think of more questions?

Your account manager is available to help guide you every step of the way and answer any additional questions. You can also visit the search alliance website that includes news and information about the transition.