Yahoo! and Bing Form Search Alliance

If you have ever conducted an online search, chances are you have used Google. Holding the lion's share of organic and paid search, Google has become a household name throughout the world. Yahoo! and Bing have decided to give Google a run for their money. As the second and third most popular search engines on the web, the two have announced that they are merging their algorithms for organic and paid search in attempt to close the market gap.

First announced in 2009, this alliance only impacts organic and paid search results. Yahoo! and Bing will maintain separate entities for services such as local search, news and groups. Organic search results will be powered by Bing, delivered using the same algorithm across both engines. As a result, identical ranking positions will be seen for web, photos, and videos. It will also no longer be necessary to manage two separate paid search campaigns with individual regulations and guidelines. Yahoo! and Bing will be combining their Pay-Per-Click (PPC) platforms presenting the same ads based from the same keyword list across both engines. By joining forces, this alliance would result in about a 30% share of US search engine traffic (approximately 5.2 billion monthly searches), reducing the margin between Google and Yahoo!/Bing.

Understanding that this transition is a lengthy process and will require campaign readjustments for marketers, Yahoo! and Bing are rolling out changes gradually. Many businesses rely on the holiday season as one of the most profitable times of the year, and this has been taken into consideration during this merger. Bing has stated "if we conclude that it would improve the overall experience, we may choose to defer the transition to 2011" (projected complete transition date of October 2010). On August 17th it was announced that the transition for organic search will be completed by the end of the week. Testing for the paid program has begun with a full transition expected by mid-October 2010.