Bing/Yahoo to be integrated in “18-24 months”
9th March 2010 by William Hobson
Yahoo and Microsoft’s partnership has recently been approved by regulators in both the EU and the US.
Although the deal largely consists of a change in how search engine marketing is managed on both networks, the question of how Yahoo Search will integrate Bing algorithms has been in the minds of many of those working in SEO.
An answer to this question has now been revealed, thanks to WebProNews, an online news provider that covers all things digital. Last weekend, WebProNews visited the Yahoo Headquarters on their way to search engine marketing conference SMX west, where they spoke to Shashi Seth - VP of Yahoo Search products – and discovered several important details about the Yahoo/Bing deal.
In a video featured on their site, Seth discloses that “the integration will take somewhere in the range of 18 to 24 months for it to happen worldwide. We’re obviously going to start with the US market first, then once we’re done with that then we’ll move onto other geographies and regions.”
Under the deal, Yahoo! search will feature universal search results and PPC search advertising powered by Microsoft’s Bing. Shah says that though Yahoo! users will be provided with “the same set of results that they would provide their [Bing's] users”, Yahoo!’s search page will continue to offer “so much more”, such as sports, finance and user-specific content.
“We need to play to our core strengths and our core strengths are around content and experiences,” he said. “I think the users who come to Yahoo! search are looking for that differentiation.”
According to WebProNews, users and SEO specialists could see changes to the Yahoo! search algorithms over the next few months depending on their area.
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