Yahoo / MSN Search Alliance Update

Yahoo and MSN have moved one step closer to completing their search alliance. Yahoo announced that they are now performing limited tests with the Bing search algorithm and ad serving platform. Yahoo has stated that they are using the Bing search algorithm and paid search listings for up to 25% of Yahoo search traffic in the United States.

This test should last through July and into August. Yahoo expects that the full integration of the Bing search algorithm and paid search listings should happen before the holiday shopping season, but may be pushed to 2011. The new Bing crawler will launch October 1 and will be renamed to "bingbot". The "bingbot" will still honor the directives written for the "msnbot".

What does this new search alliance mean?

Basically Yahoo is dumping their current search results and moving to the Bing search algorithm. The Bing search algorithm will power the web, image, and video search results on Yahoo. Bing will provide Yahoo the page title, description, URL, and any quick links. Yahoo will be using the page title and URL, but can shorten the description and has the option to display or not display the quick links. Yahoo will continue to supplement their lists with rich results, vertical search products (i.e. Yahoo! news), search apps and site filters. Yahoo will also abandon their Panama ad serving platform and move to MSN Adcenter.

Recent Experian Hitwise data has shown that Bing is capturing about 9.85% of all U.S. searches, with Yahoo at 14.37%, and Google at 71.65%. So this Yahoo / Bing search alliance will capture around 25% of the search market share.