Most of you have heard of the Microsoft-Yahoo! business deal, right? Well, if you’re a search marketer, your life just got a little bit more complicated. Even if the final details of the deal won’t be completed until next year, there will be significant changes felt in the search marketing landscape in the next few months. By partnering with Yahoo!, Microsoft will also be taking 28 percent of the search market. Though it’s nowhere near Google’s 65 percent market share, new search parameters based on Microsoft’s Bing will change the way we’ve been optimizing for Google.
Marketers will now need to optimize pages in two different ways – one for Google and one for Bing. Also, Google has been working on Caffeine, its update to its current search engine, which has been in place for the last four years. Is it a coincidence? Or did Google realize that the new Microhoo partnership would be a formidable competitor in the search marketing space?
Monitor the search conversation. If you don’t, your current Google-optimized site might not show up on Bing, and it may drop in rankings when Caffeine is finally implemented.
