For those who work in the search marketing sector, the news everyone has been discussing recently is the proposed deal between Microsoft and Yahoo! The deal has created significant speculation in the USA, where Yahoo! has a much higher share of the search market than it does in the UK. The reports suggest that their respective engines combined will give them approximately 23% of the market share with Google dominating at around 74%. But how does this affect the search landscape in the UK?
Google's Search Share
In my opinion, there will be no dramatic change at all, at least for the foreseeable future. According to Statcounter Global, Google currently monopolizes UK searches; accounting for about 90% of them. Bing and Yahoo! combined are likely to take an initial 8% share over here (with approximately 2% of searches powered by other engines). So does the deal have any benefits for either advertisers or search marketers?
SEO Benefits
The obvious benefit that springs to mind is the fact that SEO consultants like myself will now only have to worry about optimising websites for the “big two” rather than “big three” engines. If the deal goes ahead (it is still pending a U.S governmental review), then as of next year all of Yahoo’s search results will be powered by Microsoft’s engine Bing. This is not good news for the smaller search engines who are trying to compete but, in my opinion, great news for advertisers looking to rank across the three main search platforms.
From my experience I have found it much easier to achieve page one results on Google and Bing. The technology behind Yahoo! seems to focus on pulling in data from its directory whereas both Google and Bing pay more attention to the META title tag. Interestingly, this has quite a dramatic effect on the end-user experience. Try using Michael Kordahi’s Blind Search tool, for example. This tool delivers search results from Google, Yahoo! and Bing but without letting you know which engine they are associated with. Nine times out of ten I find myself choosing either Google or Bing’s search offerings. In my opinion the technology behind Bing is far preferable to that of Yahoo! and will result in better SEO performance and campaigns.
PPC Benefits
Again, the obvious benefit for PPC campaigns will be the move from having to co-ordinate three account management platforms (AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft Ad Centre) to just two. There is talk also from Microsoft regarding the possibility of developed integration with AdWords enabling all PPC campaigns to be managed from one account interface. This instantly removes the frustration of managing platforms that deliver little or no traffic. In addition, the higher combined search volumes from Bing/Yahoo! will make the investment of account management time more worthwhile.