Yahoo and Microsoft Search Deal Finalized

Online news sources are reporting that Microsoft and Yahoo! have finally reached an agreement where Yahoo! organic and paid search results will be powered by Bing, Microsofts search platform. Advertisers will now have a united platform but the organic results user interface will remain largely unchanged for Yahoo! users. The transition has already begun but recently passed the final stages of regulatory checks from the European Commission and the Department of Justice. Will this have a huge impact on traffic driven from these platforms?
Perhaps the most important part of this deal for both companies is the unified advertising platform which combines the power of Bing and Microsoft Adcenter powered search listings with the market share of the two. Microsoft and Yahoo! also have deals in place with large content providers such as the WSJ and facebook, so organic and paid listings will show up in other high traffic areas as well.

As the Bing / Microsoft / Yahoo! search acquisition has been finalized, advertisers should see a much greater reason to move to the platform. This is of particular significance considering most smaller advertisers have only been using Google, the de facto search marketing platform for years. It will be interesting to see how the increased market share impacts revenues over the coming months, and of particular importance will be the impact to the bottom line of businesses around the globe who rely on traffic from Yahoo and Bing organic listings, which have significantly different algorithms than Google. Techcrunch’s Erick Schonfeld has been covering the deal and makes some interesting commentary on the acquisition.

Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Finally Cleared By DOJ and European Commission