This week, Microsoft announced it’s started the rollout of Bing search results to replace the results from Yahoo. It’s already happened in the United States and Canada, so it was only a matter of time really.
Basically this means that Yahoo results will become ‘kaput’ and the Bing search engine will be used to supply results to Bing and Yahoo, as well as their partner search engines.
If you’ve been optimising for Yahoo, it’s time to stop and get on board with Bing.
Probably the big thing to note is that while the vast majority of search traffic is generated through Google, it’s my belief that Bing will become more prominent as a search engine this year.
This is due to the obvious fact that Yahoo has gone, but also that I think Facebook will be integrating the Bing search engine more heavily in 2011.
Having said all that, when you run a comparison on search terms through Bing and Google, the results are usually pretty close, so I think you just have to take it on a case-by-case basis.
I’d also recommend checking how much traffic is coming from Bing and Yahoo in your analytics to decide whether it’s worth optimising for Bing. We have looked at traffic our clients get from Yahoo and Bing and we’re not getting too worried about Bing knocking Google off its perch just yet.
This ‘transition’ may also mean the end for Yahoo Site Explorer, which will be a sad thing, especially for us SEO’s.
The other thing to mention about the Bing/Yahoo7 transition is the Yahoo Search Marketing has also bitten the dust.
What originally started out as Goto.com, then Overture, then finally YSM, has finally gone out with a bit of a whimper. Although, having used all three iterations, YSM was very hard and slow to use. So I’m not really that sad to see it go.
The transition will involve all YSM accounts being moved (or integrated) into Microsoft AdCenter.
Microsoft AdCenter started out quite primitively but has gotten better over the last year. It’s still really like AdWords was in the old days so it’s got a lot of catching up to do to match Google AdWords’ flexibility and capability.
But I still like it much more than YSM!
The issue I’ve found is I’m not sure where the ads actually show, and when they do, hardly anyone clicks anyway.
There are lots of other people who are experiencing the same problem with AdCenter. But Microsoft isn’t short of a quid, so I imagine it’ll continue to improve. I suppose it all depends on whether Facebook will start snatching workers from Microsoft, given that most of the Google AdWords employees have been enticed away!
Oh, and a final tip, don’t forget to setup Bing Webmaster Tools as well.
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Chris Thomas heads up Reseo, a search engine optimisation company which specialises in creating and maintaining Google AdWords campaigns and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns for a range of corporate clients.
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