25% of Yahoo Results Are Already Powered by Bing
Bing and Yahoo have begun testing in Yahoo search results recently (both paid and organic), with up to 25% of all results in Yahoo now being powered by Bing. If you want to check this out in action, try doing searches in Yahoo and Bing to see if the results are identical. Note: Most of the search results do not say “Powered by Bing,” but in the coming weeks, the testing is expected to expand and may include more notations when Bing results are being supplemented.
Recently, in an effort to provide a better experience than the Overture-Panama transition debacle of 2007, we’ve had regular communication from Yahoo and Bing about the next steps in the transition and an outline of when we can expect changes to occur. Here’s the latest timeline we’ve received:
Currently, they’ve begun organic and paid search testing. The next step is a complete transition of organic results in mid-August. For paid search, testing will continue until October, but there will be a bunch of preliminary transition steps starting in August and September to ensure a smooth transition.
Since all advertisers will be moving from Yahoo to Bing, there will obviously be some changes. Here are some interesting facts about the transition:
PPC and Organic Results – While PPC and organic results will be powered by Bing, a majority of the elements on the page will still be Yahoo content, including the entire left column (as demonstrated by the player profiles in the image below). While this doesn’t affect SEO or PPC, it is still interesting to see which elements will still be Yahoo, and what a small percentage of the overall page space will actually be powered by Bing.
Overall Market Share Growth - Combined, Yahoo and Bing will generate an anticipated 4.8 billion searches monthly. This is an attempt at toppling the search king, Google, by expecting to command a combined 30.4% market share. Over the past year, Bing has continued to increase market share, so it will be interesting to see how the Search Alliance continues to impact Google market share. Note: Currently the market shares are at 18.3% and 12.1% for Yahoo and Bing, respectively.
Match Types – As any seasoned search marketer knows, Yahoo only works with Standard and Advanced match types, while Bing operates with Broad, Phrase and Exact match types. With the transition, Standard Match will be seen as Exact Match and Advanced will be seen as Broad Match. Notice that nothing will be set to Phrase Match initially.
- Tip: Once Yahoo accounts are transitioned, switch Broad match keywords to Phrase match if you like your campaign a little more targeted.
Keywords – Currently, Yahoo sees variations of the same phrase as duplicates, so when adding in the keyword “truck,” it automatically removes any similar keywords, including “truk,” “trucks” and “truks.” When the Bing transition is complete, you can add these keywords back to help expand your keyword list and exposure in the search results.
- Tip: Try uploading your Google campaign (if it includes keywords Yahoo sees as duplicates) into Bing after the transition. If you originally uploaded your Google campaign into Yahoo (which removed a lot of the similar keywords), this will help get a lot more keywords into your campaign with very little work.
When it’s over, the Search Alliance is setting the expectation that it will make our experience better both online in the search results, and in the back end by utilizing a newly enhanced AdCenter interface. I’m optimistic that this will occur, since both search engines are still far behind Google in many ways. Here’s to a better (and more efficient) search experience all around!
About the Author: Ellen Stevens
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