Microsoft and Yahoo! continue to work actively toward implementing our Search Alliance internationally, and today we are reaching an important milestone for Europe.
On August 3rd, the transition of Yahoo! Search back-end technology over to the Bing platform begins for France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK. This means that soon Yahoo! organic search results, on both PC and mobile, will be Powered by Bing – as it is already the case in the United States, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Peru and Venezuela.
Combining forces to accelarate innovation
Scale is a critical driver of search relevancy: the more users, the faster and more refined the algorithm becomes. So for Yahoo!, this transition is an important step toward its goal of improving the overall relevance of its organic search results and attracting a larger audience to Yahoo! Search.
For Bing, this represents an additional testament of our successful investment in core search which recently convinced companies such as Facebook, Nokia or RIM to adopt our technology for their web search services.
And of course, both companies will continue to innovate on their respective search experience, providing consumers with more choices to find the information and richer options to accomplish tasks.
What this means for brands
This significant evolution of the search landscape does not impact search advertising for now, but it may have a significant impact on SEO strategies. If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you will want to make sure that you are prepared for this change.
To ensure that their web properties are properly referenced and indexed by the Bing algorithm, webmasters should register their websites and sitemap in the Bing Webmaster Tools, leverage the free analytics and adopt best practices shared in this extensive resource centre.
Next steps
With regards to the paid search transition of Yahoo! traffic into Microsoft Advertising adCenter outside North America, both companies continue to focus on meeting marketplace and product performance benchmarks we have agreed. We are making good progress, as echoed by independent third parties such as Efficient Frontier and Marin Software. We have recently extended our testing efforts to gain the learnings necessary to provide international advertisers and partners with a quality transition experience.
Once these tests completed, we will be able to provide an update on our global rollout plans for search marketing. We remain more than ever committed to providing advertisers and partners with ample notice prior to the transition of their market, and working with them to plan and prepare for a smooth transition.
To learn more about the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance, visit: www.searchalliance.com/