The Microsoft-Yahoo deal is being buzzed about all over the internet. The deal, which will see Yahoo give up its search technology and instead lease that of Microsoft, essentially lessens the number of major search engine competitors from three to two (of course, this is a very America-centered perspective that discounts the massive popularity of foreign search engines like Baidu in China and Yandex in Russia).
Those who speculated that Bing wouldn’t get far off the ground are likely going to be proven wrong once this deal takes place. But we shouldn’t get ahead of ourselves – the deal has been settled, but it is not set to take place for another two years. Of course, some are saying that Microsoft and Yahoo won’t wait that long to shift their search technologies to accommodate the deal.
For its part, Google does not appear worried (but they wouldn’t show it if they were, would they?). Google’s VP Marissa Mayer was recently quoted as saying that the search deal may harm the competition since “everyone runs faster in a race where there are more people.” Her implication is that Yahoo and Microsoft will be less motivated to come out with search innovations since there is less competition. However, her statement could be turned just as easily on Google, who will now also face a search industry with fewer competitors. But then, Google’s always been pretty good at self-motivation.
So what’s a web developer to do?
It would seem that optimizing for Bing is a better idea than ever now. Even though the deal has yet to be accepted by shareholders, it shows that Bing is on the road to becoming something bigger than many had imagined. By optimizing for Bing, site developers are not likely to lose out if the deal doesn’t take place in the end – Bing is likely to be around for a while. It certainly can’t hurt.
Web developers should also consider limiting, if not eliminating, their reliance on Yahoo’s search-related tools. One example is Build Your Own Search Search (BOSS) which is built on the Yahoo search index. While Yahoo does say that BOSS will remain live for the time-being, it is not likely to survive the deal. Search Monkey, which enables site owners to enhance how their results appear on Yahoo, is potentially safe, but Yahoo’s developers can only say that they don’t have anything concrete to say on this topic.
Another useful tool that Yahoo provides is its Site Explorer, which enables site developers to view the links that link back to their site, listed according to value. Developers are unsure whether this Site Explorer data will be transferred over to Bing, which currently does not have any such tool.
Of course, this is just a sampling of the number of changes that could take place in the search world once the deal goes through. For now, it’s too early to suggest any guaranteed-to-please changes that site developers can make to give themselves a leg-up on the competition once the deal goes through, but certainly we can say that optimizing for Bing has never been a more promising endeavor.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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