Yahoo goes with a Bing!
Firstly, sorry for my terrible pun, secondly; what a turn up for the books? Or maybe Yahoo & Bing setting a 10 year search deal is just a surprise that wasn't really. I’ll be keeping a very close eye on the news on this one, but for now, a few of my thoughts.
With Yahoo and Bing now joining forces to tackle the presence of Google in search, we should be able to assume that marketers can expect some great offerings with their combined knowledge and offerings. The search market could remain at a steady-ish 80% for Google in the UK or in the US 70% to Google and 30% to everyone else, but this could also be a good dent in Google’s share.
Maybe this has been a long time coming? With Yahoo shutting down the european content match in the spring, and Microsoft launching the new search engine, Bing, is yesterday’s announcement the culmination of a master plan constructed in initial talks all those months ago?
For marketers at least, there will be one less platform to worry about as adCentre from Microsoft will serve the paid search marketing across both networks. With a desktop editor and easier to use platform than Yahoo Panama, I think that I am not alone in giving a little Schumey jump knowing that I will no longer have to deal with the slightly clunky Panama platform, but I am still intrigued as to how the networks will work with marketers to get over the hurdle of campaign combining?
One thing is for sure, we probably will be seeing a number of new products released into the market for search over the next twelve months that may switch marketers over, but what about search consumers? The Bing launch had more of a fizzle than a roar after the first week and Yahoo have been limping along for some time now - can they combine their powers to overtake Google's popularity? Or even take a share of their devoted market? Will the scriptwriters stop using phrases such as “Google it” and replace it with, “see what Yahoo has”?
This blog post was written by Sarah
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