Editorial Articles

Matthew Oxley, Head of Search at  Gravytrain, considers the impact of the new Search Alliance deal which combines Yahoo! and Bing's organic search results

You may have noticed recently that Yahoo!’s organic search results have become the same as those on Bing – part of the 'Search Alliance' deal, for which the UK rollout began on the 3 August. In fact, Bing is now powering the organic search listings for Yahoo! in six more countries (France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and India being the other five).

For PPC advertisers, the changes will have little effect – only organic results have been transitioned thus far. However, in an email to advertisers, Yahoo! advise advertisers to compare ranking differences from the old Yahoo! results, and adjust their paid search strategies to cover the impact of any gaps caused as a result.

The reality is that few brands will be doing a great deal about this. In fact the changes will go largely unnoticed by many. Google have a 92 per cent market share in the UK, so even a combination of Bing and Yahoo! isn’t attractive enough to make many advertisers worry about their rankings on these engines.

Search engines work to unknown algorithms, so trying to optimise for any given search engine other than Google can often be counterproductive unless the effect of the change is also likely to positively influence Google. Prior to the merger, strategies to influence engines other than Bing were either non-existent in most companies, or low priority. Having spoken to a few people in the industry about this, it doesn’t appear much has changed. The lack of interest doesn’t stem from laziness on the part of search marketers, but a realistic notion that risking a fall isn’t worth a similar gain in Bing & Yahoo!.

What most digital folk seem interested in at this stage is the future potential of the new alliance, and being positioned to react to a shift in the market conditions. While Both Bing and Yahoo! are small beer in the UK, they have a more sizeable share in the US. It’s well known that consumer habits in the UK have a tendency to follow, sometimes with a slight lag, those in the US. The new platform has a solid enough base in the US from which to persuade users they can deliver better results than Google – if that were to happen (and it’s a big if), there’d be every chance of searchers in the UK following suit.

Somewhat more likely than the alliance being able to take on Google in search, is the opportunity for one of them – probably Yahoo! - to develop a compelling proposition in an alternative niche to traditional search. Yahoo Answers! Is becoming increasingly popular, and without the worry of having to maintain a search engine, this might well be the future for Yahoo!.
The problem for those trying to allocate marketing resources though, is that the above is all speculation and guesswork. Right now, the only game in town as far as organic search goes is Google, and backing any other engine to deliver a sizeable amount of traffic is not much better than having a go on the horses. 

Matthew Oxley, Head of Search, Gravytrain