Yahoo! and Microsoft Advertising get cozy
It’s a little late for Valentine’s Day, but it looks like Yahoo! and Microsoft are the latest couple on the block. As of today, it’s official: U.S. and European regulators have approved the Yahoo!-Microsoft search agreement.
Under the agreement, Microsoft’s search technology will power all the core functionality of Yahoo! Search for a period of 10 years.
What does this mean for you? It all depends on what sort of search marketing you do.
The biggest direct change to search marketers is that all PPC advertising for both Yahoo! and Bing will now be managed via Microsoft adCenter (the previous control panel for Bing PPC). So whereas you used to have to manage paid search campaigns across 3 tools, you’ll now be able to reach 95% of the global search market via Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.
Yahoo!’s search blog has more details on how the merger affects your PPC efforts.
As of now, we still don’t know what this will mean for local search on both Yahoo! and Bing. We’ll be watching to see any new developments.
Meanwhile, Yahoo! and Microsoft have set up a SearchAlliance website where you can get more info.
Kipp Chambers
Sr. Internet Marketing Specialist
