This was something that had been coming, but it was unknown exactly when the date would be.  Yahoo and Microsoft have made an alliance.  It’s called the “Search Alliance”.  Originally it was intended as a unification for paid advertisements, but it’s clear now that the unification is for both paid and organic listings; do a search on both Yahoo and Bing for a keyword phrase, and the results are now identical.

It’s clear from a bit of research that this change means that Yahoo’s search algorithm is no longer being used, and all Yahoo results now mimic Bing’s results.

This does greatly affect SEO, since the way Yahoo used to rank differed from how you could rank on Bing.  Now all strategies are moving towards the Bing search engine algorithm for ranking on either engine.

Whether or not this is a test or a permanent change we’ll have to see, but it’s clear that both engines are now united, perhaps in an effort to make a dent into Google’s crown over the search market.

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I got an email from Microsoft adCenter promoting the new alliance between Yahoo and Microsoft.  They’re calling it “Search Alliance“.  The aim is to have their online paid advertising fully unified before the 2010 holiday season, although they did say that they’ll wait until 2011 if they “determine this will be more effective”.

Microsoft bought out Yahoo, so now the primary tool behind both search engines will be Bing, and behind the pay per click (and other paid online advertisements) will be adCenter.  The Search Alliance has stated that each company will “continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences”.  Not sure exactly how they’ll pull that off with the same search engine for both, but they may just mean the search interface.

The support will be broken apart, Yahoo supporting the bigger advertisers, and Microsoft will provide support to “self-service” advertisers.  They are combining their platforms for the advertising audience, so ads put together under this new alliance will reach consumers using either search engine.  The Search Alliance brags that advertisers of all sizes will now be able to have access to a combined audience of nearly 577 million worldwide searchers.

At any rate, this is pretty big news – Yahoo and MS pulling together to battle the mighty Google.  I expect this may be an epic battle.

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It appears Yahoo’s performance is declining, and their deal with Microsoft (Bing is going to become the Yahoo master of services) is impending.  So they’re taking their “Hot Jobs” section – and selling it to the highest bidder.

They apparently need some extra money (not a strange thing to hear in these economic times).  I don’t blame them, since they expect between $350 million and $500 million.  The money they need as Google (and apparently Bing) are pushing their lowering search numbers.

For other details, check out Brafton’s story on this.

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