The search engine marketing blogs and forums have spoken of a deal between the two search engines for a while now. After much anticipation, a 10-year deal between Yahoo! and Microsoft was announced this week.
Not much for SEO and SEM professionals to worry about right now – the deal still needs to be approved by federal regulators. In short though, this new partnership:
- Microsoft acquires an exclusive 10-year license to Yahoo!’s core search technologies and the ability to integrate it into existing web search platforms
- Each company will keep its own separate display advertising business and sales staff
- Microsoft will compensate Yahoo! for traffic generated on Yahoo!’s network through a revenue sharing agreement
- The agreement is for 10 years
Yahoo!’s appearance will not change but will include a disclaimer at the bottom of each page saying “Powered by Bing.” Nothing will change until regulators approve the deal, expected no earlier than the first of next year.
Integration in the United States will begin with search and then with search ads, which will now be powered by Microsoft’s adCenter. Integration will then expand to other countries.
No need to get excited right now – it’s going to take some time for these changes to happen. And according to Rusty Brick at Search Engine Roundtable, Yahoo! has made many changes in the past so even though their agreement with Microsoft is for 10 years, don’t be surprised if something drastic changes in 5.
Learn more at this Search Engine Land article and see what search engine optimization professionals have to say about this merger at DigitalPoint and WebMasterWorld forums.