Yahoo + Bing: a ding for Google??
July 29th, 2009 Posted by: Bill Gadless
Yahoo and Microsoft today announced their joint search/advertising partnership, a deal that had been gestating since the turnover from Jerry Yang to Carol Bartz at Yahoo. “The reason the deal happened now is the recent success of Bing. I think it put pressure on Yahoo, as well as Yahoo not being able to turn it around on its own,” according to Gartner Inc. analyst Neil MacDonald.
Under the arrangement:
- Yahoo search results will be powered by Bing
- Bing Paid Search will be handled by Yahoo, though the technology will be Bing’s
- Yahoo will gain limited access to users’ Bing search data, enabling it to better target ad presentation
The deal allows both companies to focus on their core competencies: Microsoft can focus on technology and Yahoo on marketing and sales. It also enables them to challenge Google’s stranglehold on the search marketplace: 65% (Comscore data), while together MS and Yahoo account for only about 28% of US search market share (Google’s dominance in the rest of the world is even greater, where those numbers are 67 to 11%). If Bing’s early buzz continues, additional search market share should come its way; and Yahoo’s reach will clearly put Bing in front of many more eyeballs.
But one shouldn’t get overly excited yet; this deal will take time, because there are some tough hurdles to overcome – antitrust, technology and privacy. In the best case, the deal isn’t expected to close until early next year, and then it could take another two years before all the pieces are in place worldwide …and that’s if Google’s expected negative lobbying effort with antitrust regulators doesn’t succeed.
Is this something that B2B marketers need to respond to? I think not. If you’re like most of our B2B clients, your search traffic is 80–85% Google-based …well above the US average. If you’re thinking about PPC advertising on the new platform to augment your Google visibility, other engines are probably more suitable to advertise on: Business.com (general), Capterra.com (software), ThomasNet (industrial) and Globalspec (engineering). But stay tuned, of course…
Entry Filed under: B2B Web Strategy,Search Engine Marketing
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