And Then There Were Two…

I’m not a big expert on the history of search engines (if you’re looking for a nice little snapshot, check out this “History of Search” graphic). However, I DO remember using Google all the way back when it first came online in 97′…and as a user I haven’t looked back since. I’ve tried to use Yahoo and MSN/LIVE/Bing over the years, but Google has always been my first choice.

As a marketer, Google has been very big for me as well. I’ve found that pay-per-click ads on Yahoo and MSN offer slightly lower costs and similar quality to Google, but unfortunately only a small fraction of the traffic.

In terms of SEO, Google simply dwarfs traffic from Yahoo or Bing – heck, even Google image search dwarfs traffic from Yahoo or Bing. I’ve found that Yahoo is bigger than Bing, and that – at best – Yahoo can send about 1/6th the traffic that Google can send. Bing? About a tenth.

While it’s never OK to ignore a potential source of traffic like Bing or Yahoo, it’s been pretty easy to forget about them…until now. A recent email from Yahoo tells me that, while Yahoo and MSN might not merge their PPC ad structures in time for the holidays, they’re definitely going to merge their organic search engines in the next 90 days:

…another key aspect of the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is the transition of Yahoo! organic search result…Assuming our testing continues to yield high quality results, we anticipate that our organic search results will be powered by Bing beginning in the August/September timeframe.

That’s right sports fans, starting in October, SEO is going to be devoted to optimizing for two major search engines Bing (a.k.a. David) and Google (a.k.a. Goliath). With Bing+Yahoo holding a 25% share of the search market, Google is still going to be about three times as important as Bing…but Google is huge. I’ll take a third of Google’s traffic any day.

While I won’t try to predict if Google will maintain their search engine share dominance (I’ve listed some reasons Google will emerge the winner here, and some reasons they won’t here), I’ll tell you one thing I like about Bing better than Google: when Google changes their search algorythm, you find out by looking at your analytics. They don’t give you a warning or a heads-up.

Bing, on the other hand, is kind enough to sending us a notice that things may shift:

If organic search results are an important source of referrals to your website, you’ll want to make sure that you’re prepared for this change:

• Compare your organic search rankings on Yahoo! Search and Bing for the keywords that drive your business, to help determine any potential impact to your traffic and sales
• Review the Bing webmaster tools and optimize your website for the Bing crawler, as Bing results will be displayed for approximately 30%* of overall search query market share after this change”

So, just like the email says, you need to check your rankings on both engines and make sure your site is registered with Bing’s webmaster tools.

Questions?