This week, we're taking a look at the effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website. Yahoo will change its search engine, and there will be a new search result provider that reaches a lot of potential customers.
In the news: There are new search engine market share statistics, new interface changes on Google result pages, and Twitter becomes more and more a search engine.
Table of contents:
We hope that you enjoy this newsletter and that it helps you to get more out of your website. Please pass this newsletter on to your friends.
Best regards,
1. The effect of the Yahoo/Microsoft deal on your website
You've probably heard about the Yahoo/Microsoft deal. This will have a major impact on the search engine landscape and there definitely will be effects on your website rankings and the number of visitors that your website will get.
The basic facts
Yahoo is going to give up their own search technology and use Microsoft's search technology instead. Bing.com will power the organic and the paid search results on Yahoo (except for premium ads on Yahoo).
Self-serve advertising (i.e. the AdWords competitor) will be managed by Microsoft's AdCenter. Microsoft will get access to Yahoo's search technology and can use it to improve its own search technology.
What does this mean for your website?
You should optimize for Bing.com.
Yahoo/Bing will have a search market share of at least 15% (that's the current market share of MSN and Yahoo combined - some statistics show a much higher market share).
If you do not optimize some of your website pages for Bing, you'll lose a lot of visitors and sales. Fortunately, IBP's top 10 optimizer already enables you to optimize your website for Bing.
The optimizer works with the US version of Bing as well as with many country versions. Recent research has shown that Bing's traffic is more likely to convert.
Yahoo's inbound link data will probably be lost.
Yahoo is the search engine that currently returns the most inbound link data. When Yahoo drops its index, that data will probably be lost. We recommend using IBP's link manager if you want to get an overview of the websites that link to your website.
The link manager in IBP will retrieve all links that are returned by Yahoo, Bing, Google and other search engines.
A big PPC provider will be gone, an even bigger provider will appear.
Microsoft will provide the search ads for Yahoo and Bing. Yahoo will close its own paid search offerings. That means that you will be able to manage your ads for both Yahoo and Bing in one user interface. It probably also means rising bid prices on Yahoo and Bing.
Yahoo might close some of their websites.
Yahoo might put its Internet directory into question as well as their alternative search applications SearchMonkey and SearchBOSS. Applications such as Yahoo Maps might also be reconsidered because Bing offers similar services.
There will be two independent search result pages.
Yahoo will have full control over the user interface of their search form. The ordering of the results, the layout and the whole search focus can be different from Bing. That means that you still might have to optimize your website for both search engines.
The deal still needs shareholder and legal approval. Yahoo and Microsoft hope that the changes will be in place by early 2010. If you want to participate from the change as soon as possible, you should optimize some of your web pages for Bing now.
Optimize different pages of your website for different search engines and different keywords. What works with one search engine might not work with another. Optimize each web page for a dedicated search engine/keyword combination to get better results.
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
2. Search engine news and articles of the week
Out of search business, Yahoo shifts its focus
"Yahoo will lose some of its most talented engineers to Microsoft and as many as 400 employees through layoffs. The deal also undercuts years of investment around search technology. [...] While encouraged by some of Bing's innovations, [Yahoo CEO] Carol Bartz figures that Google will most likely match them soon. 'That is the arms race I don’t want to be in,' she said."Hitwise: Bing + Yahoo! now equals 26% of search market
"Now that the deal is official, the latest search numbers tell us that Google has 70.6% of all U.S. query volume while the combined Bing and Yahoo! Search now comprise 26% of all U.S. searches, leaving only 3.4% for the other 54 engines that we track in search share (1,465 search engines that we track in market share of visits)."It's Google's world, we just live in it
"Google has a 60% share of search queries in the U.S., but that number is 67% worldwide, according to ComScore. In many top and growing internet countries, including Germany, Canada, Brazil, Turkey and Italy, Google has more than 80% of the search market."Google adds custom date range search to result pages
"Google's web search toolbelt has been updated and it now includes an option that lets you find web pages from a user-defined period of time. "Google launches a major offensive against Microsoft with 'Going Google'
"Google is back on the offensive, with a major promotional campaign to get the word out about organizations switching to Google apps for their daily computing needs."Twitter plays up search with new home page
"Twitter unveiled a brand-new home page that [...] makes Twitter look a lot more like a real-time search engine. [...] The new home page sums up the way Twitter sees itself today: a tool to 'share and discover what's happening right now, anywhere in the world.'"Search engine newslets Google's 'Show More Results' link goes contextual.Google Docs integrates with Google Search.Google new AdWords interface is out of beta.Google releases Bid Simulator to AdWords advertisers.Google not liable for false ads.Yahoo is testing a new search results layout.Yahoo enhances local search results with more business information.Microsoft has kicked off a new series of ads for Bing.Ask.com's parent company IAC posts lower Q2 profit.Updated list of Google accounts on Twitter.Google challenger Blekko raises US$11.5 million.Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
3. New: IBP 11.5 now supports Google's keyword suggestion tool!
We have just released IBP version 11.5!
Based on user feedback we have improved the keyword manager so that IBP now supports the Google AdWords keyword suggestion tool in many different languages. You don't even have to enter a captcha code when searching for keyword suggestions.
Get the number of Google searches for any keyword in many languages, including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, and more. Download IBP version 11.5 now!
Back to table of contents - Visit Axandra.com
The Search Engine Facts newsletter is free. Please recommend it to someone you know.
You may publish one of the articles above on your Web site. However, you must not change the contents in any way. Also, you must keep all links and you must add the following two lines with a link to www.Axandra.com: "Copyright by Axandra.com. Web site promotion software."
All product names, copyrights and trademarks mentioned in this newsletter are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders.
Back issues:
http://www.free-seo-news.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment