In the last few weeks as more information has started to trickle its way from Yahoo! and Microsoft about the search alliance, I have started to share some information on this blog to facilitate this knowledge transfer. Ultimately every single advertiser who is managing a PPC account on both Yahoo! and Microsoft should be aware of the impending changes in order to best prepare for them.

I should also correct myself as in a previous post I called the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance a ‘merger’ when in fact, the new relationship between these two companies cannot technically be called such.

Why It’s Not a Merger

Yahoo and Microsoft will still exist as separate entities and the companies will be working together on some things, while competing on others.

The collaborative efforts will have the following impact:

• All advertisers will use Microsoft adCenter to centrally manage their PPC account. Your ads will appear on both properties, the Yahoo and Bing search engines, but this will be managed via Microsoft adCenter.
• Microsoft will provide the search algorithm for the organic and paid search results for both companies
• The Microsoft team will support standard advertisers, ultimately those smaller advertisers with lesser budgets
• Yahoo! will support the premium advertisers, agencies and resellers

Both companies will still compete:

• Each company will maintain its own display advertising program
• Web properties and products, email and instant messaging will not be affected by the Search Alliance
• Both companies will own and innovate their own consumer search experience to compete for searchers and search queries
• Both companies will service their respective affiliate search partners and Yahoo! will continue to syndicate its existing search affiliate partnerships

Transition Planning

We know that the transition will be happening, now it a question of when. According to Yahoo! the plan is to transition US accounts before the 2010 holiday season, which translates to roughly November 2010. Should the transition not succeed in this timeframe, it will be left for the start of 2011 to protect the holiday season. We know that the transition period will be initiated in late summer, so you should ensure that all your ducks are in a row by early August to prepare for this.

One can assume that the advertisers spending more money will get priority service and may thus be privy to more options and information. However, even without knowing exact dates, it is important to think about and develop your transition strategy. There are a few options to consider:

-       Keep your existing AdCenter account and optimise: you may have an existing account that has a suitable structure, a good click history and simply requires some focused attention as you build the account to handle significantly higher volume and budget.

You should begin optimising this account NOW – start adding ad groups and keyword baskets from your existing Yahoo account. Focused attention now, will result in a higher quality score that will be beneficial in a more competitive and expensive market. (Click costs will go up on AdCenter – this is inevitable, we just don’t know by what percentage, so prepare for this).

-       Create new AdCenter account and import from Yahoo / 3^rd party: You may wish to cut your losses, scrap that old AdCenter account and start fresh by setting up a new account and importing either your Google structure or Yahoo structure to the new account. This will ensure that your strategy is more streamlined because you will be working with similar structures – this might not be optimal from a demographic perspective because we’ve learnt that searchers act differently on the various search engines. However, we are all entering the unknown with this search alliance so copying a more optimised and better built out structure in Yahoo to AdCenter, might be a good alternative.

At this stage, there is still a lot that we do not know, but what is important is for advertisers to begin thinking about this PPC transition and planning accordingly. Advertisers should also follow updates closely so as to stay on top of this story as it develops. One handy way of doing this is to set up Google Alerts for relevant search terms so that the pertinent information is delivered at your doorstep so to speak.

Recently, I wrote about one of the main impacts of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance being the transition of Yahoo! Search to the Microsoft adCenter platform. For search marketers this is a fairly significant consequence of the Search Alliance, but for the searcher, the changes will not be as drastic.

So is anything going to change for the searcher? If yes, what? More importantly, when?

Ins & Outs

The short answer is, not really. The searcher is still going to benefit from Yahoo! and Bing, with their individual offerings. Yahoo is not going to suddenly become obsolete and transition completely into Bing.

Quote from the Search Alliance website:

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

What this means is that Yahoo will still look like Yahoo, but the search results will be ‘powered’ and thus syndicated by Bing, much in the same way that Google syndicates its search results to AOL.

Yahoo will try to give its search results a bit of a twist ‘by innovating around the listings it receives from Microsoft by integrating Yahoo! content, shortcuts and tools.’

The really simple answer for consumers is that unless they plan on buying shares in either of these companies, the intricacies of the search alliance will not be that obvious to them. The implications of Microsoft receiving a 10-year licence to certain Yahoo! search technologies thus making Bing and Google the principle ‘big II’ search engines will be interesting to say the least.

On the flip side, the search advertiser who is putting their dollars into Yahoo has a little bit more to worry about. The ramifications are slowly starting to become clear – more on that soon!

In mid-2009, the Yahoo-Bing merger became final and a wave of speculation hit the market about what it meant for the search industry, searcher experience, market competition, SEO & PPC implications etc.

We are now in Q2 of 2010 and the hype has died down, people got used to the merger and the key focus seems to be on Bing market share relative to Google. The irony is that slashing two engines into one was deemed the best strategy to give Google a run for its market share. Currently, market share figures for the US look as follows:

According to results published by Experian® Hitwise® on March 10, 2010 Bing’s share of search increased for a 3^rd straight month, with share of search sitting at 9.7% compared to Google’s 70.95%.

Looking at market share data is fairly rudimentary and no less painful than when there were three major search engines in the ring. What many of us may have forgotten or chosen to block out is the fact that there are far more tangible implications of this merger awaiting us. Bing and Yahoo have 24-months to make the merger complete.

According to the Yahoo website, the split of services will be as follows:

Microsoft will be the provider of web, video and image results to Yahoo!, and the basic list of results provided will be the same as those displayed on Microsoft’s Bing engine. Microsoft will provide the search advertising platform (adCenter) that will be used by both companies, and will manage the search advertising marketplace.

Ultimately this means that Bing has 2 years to roll Yahoo’s Search Marketing program into its own, making Yahoo’s Paid Search obsolete.

Whoa, No More Yahoo Search?

A reality that all advertisers will have to face is that Yahoo Search will merge into Microsoft adCenter. What this means for both advertisers and agencies is that more focus should be placed on Bing to begin understanding the interface better, increase budgets and develop a more advanced Microsoft adCenter strategy.

Currently, the reality for many advertisers is that Microsoft adCenter gets the left over budget, while Google and Yahoo receive the bulk – this will need to change when Bing becomes the 2^nd major paid search marketing platform after Google.

Expecting More from Bing

There are a number of reasons that advertisers and agencies alike may feel a sense of trepidation about the implications of this merger and Bing certainly should consider doing something about it in the near future. Otherwise Google AdWords may simply take the lion’s share of Yahoo Search’s previous budget allocation.

• Search Volume: Getting volume out of Bing is sometimes like pulling teeth.

• Poorer User Interface: The user interface is not intuitive, nor is it user friendly. In fact, between the big three, it is quite possibly the worst user experience.

• adCenter Desktop Tool: The tool does exist but a number of technical issues plague it thus often rendering it useless. This is incredibly frustrating as it becomes virtually impossible to work on large accounts without the possibility of doing bulk uploads. A Microsoft tool riddled with bugs… what a surprise!

• Customer Service: Getting anything organized with Bing requires the utmost patience because turnaround times are incredibly long. If it is billing associated, don’t hold your breath.