Written by james | 23 February 2010
Posted in S.E.O

Yahoo! and Microsoft have recently received permission from the U.S. and the European commission to aggregate their forces, without restrictions, for their new Search Alliance plans. We all knew it would happen, but now it's finally here, what does it mean for us users?

We do not yet know how far this aggregation will be implemented, but we do know that Yahoo! will be moving its organic search and paid search functions over to Microsoft. What will happen then is Yahoo! will display primary results that come from Microsoft and the two companies’ search criteria volume, and then enrich it with Yahoo! content, shortcuts and tools.

Yahoo! gave a press release to specify that implementation of this deal is expected to start as soon as a few days away, and may carry on, for advertisers and affiliates, until early 2011 for transitional reasons. It will involve the transfer of Yahoo! algorithmic and paid search functions over to Microsoft, Yahoo! gaining the privilege to be the exclusive relationship sales force for both companies’ premium search advertisers worldwide. After the full transition for all clients, customers, affiliates and advertisers, there will be a larger, unified advertising market that can deliver improved innovation for the consumers, more profitable opportunities for web publishers via a function that contains a larger pool of search queries, and better volume and efficiency for advertisers.

The advertising for both companies will now be managed by Microsoft’s AdCenter platform, and Yahoo! Search marketing will no longer be available. This means that all search ads will now be priced using AdCenter’s automated auction process. Not exactly good news for everyone.

A memo was sent to all Yahoo! advertisers comprised of four main points:

• Advertisers will reach users on Yahoo! and Microsoft sites as well as other premium partner sites paying for just a single ad purchase on adCenter.
• Yahoo Search marketing advertisers will soon log into Microsoft’s adCenter instead, to manage campaigns, for greater efficiency and a better ROI.
• Yahoo will give Search Marketing advertisers 3 months warning of any changes to take place.
• Yahoo is hoping to transition all U.S. advertisers and partners by October 2010, but may wait until 2011 to finalize for efficiency reasons.

There is even a dedicated site for the partnership, http://www.searchalliance.com . There is also a site for the transition of all Microsoft and Yahoo! clients and customers, if you’re a customer of theirs, the links are: Yahoo! customers or Microsoft customers.

For the search industry, this means that two companies that didn’t have a chance at beating Google, have now combined to create a much bigger threat. This means that the new search engine has a realistic chance at claiming the top spot from Google, but it won't be simple. Now Google actually has some form of competition as a search engine, it will be interesting to see where it will all end up. It looks like it could be a very entertaining conflict for us to watch…