It appears Microsoft is doing its best to give Google a run for its money. Last year it launched its revised search engine Bing, which currently accounts for about 12% of searches. Now it is going full force with the partnership it forged with Yahoo last summer. The two companies are working together to replace Yahoo’s search engine with Bing creating a single Bing Yahoo Search Engine. They are also transferring tens of thousands of current Yahoo advertisers to Microsoft’s search-advertising platform. It is anticipated that Bing will be handling all of the searches on Yahoo by the end of the year drawing in another 18% of searches. This will give Microsoft about a 30% share of U.S. Internet searches – still far from Google’s 64% – and reduce the number of top search engines from 3 to 2.
To further enhance its search engine presence, Microsoft is in talks with AOL to replace Google with Bing as the search engine on the company’s Internet portal bringing an additional 2% of searches. Google and AOL’s current deal expires in December.
What do the single Bing Yahoo search engine and the Microsoft AOL deal mean for your website’s SEO?
- While many website owners have mainly focused on getting high rankings on Google, Yahoo, Bing and AOL can no longer be ignored. You need to create a web presence on all four.
- If you enjoy higher rankings on Yahoo than Bing, you now need to find a way to improve your Bing rankings so you don’t take a hit when Yahoo replaces its search engine with Bing.
- If you have higher rankings on Bing than Yahoo, you may reap a nice benefit from this partnership.
- You may want to consider Pay Per Click advertising on Yahoo or Bing as their search share grows.
What can you do to prepare for the new Bing Yahoo Search Engine?
- First, ascertain your Bing and Yahoo rankings for your most important keywords.
- If your Bing rankings are lower than your Yahoo rankings you can try to match Bing’s algorithm. There are quite a few tools and resources available to help you optimize for Bing, including the white paper Bing – New Features Relevant for Webmasters.
- Most importantly, just focus on SEO best practices – target the right keywords, maintain an SEO friendly site, create fresh content and build links.
If these changes seem daunting, your SEO professional can help you through them. The world of SEO is constantly changing and it’s our job to stay on top of it all.