Bing Overtakes Yahoo – Defeating Yahoo for the First Time

SEO News (2011)

It is said that Yahoo! has abandon its own search technology, according to a deal they made with Microsoft. It is clear that after quarreling and hateful words, a Yahoo! - Microsoft deal took place. But we are not talking about Microsoft Bing taking over Yahoo! and its search engine anymore; this is about search and search advertising partnership.

Microsoft turned Live Search into Bing not just to win the hearts and minds of the masses but also to convince Yahoo! that they have the needed technology to deliver decent search results. Yahoo! CEO Carol Bartz came into the conclusion that Yahoo! cannot defeat Microsoft in terms of search. It is because Microsoft has a stronger financial stamina and they prove that they are willing to invest a lot in search.

So here’s the news on how Bing overtakes Yahoo!:
Bing takes over Yahoo! for the first time worldwide in January and has increased its lead in February. This is according to web analytics, StatCounter.  The StatCounter Global Stats found out that Bing globally reached 4.37% in February ahead of Yahoo! at 3.93%. Both of them are far behind Google’s 89.94% of the global search engine market.

But in the U.S., Yahoo! still maintains its lead by 9.74% over Bing with 9.03% while Google has 79.63%. That’s why in July 2009, Microsoft announced an agreement of Bing taking over Yahoo! search technology management. This arrangement has already been implemented in the US, Canada, Australia, Mexico and Brazil.

Benefits to Microsoft
Microsoft has benefits with this very good deal. In challenging Google on the search engine race, Microsoft Bing is now able to double in size while getting rid of their major competitor at the same time (and that competitor is Yahoo!) Another benefit is that even if they did not gain total control over Yahoo!, by this way, it would save them lots of money without the need to buy the company.

We used to have Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Live / Bing as the three players in the search engine field. All of them have been competing intensely and this competition is a tough driver for innovation. But now, the Bing vs. Yahoo competition came to an end. And the end of Yahoo! search still provides an easy way for other search engines to get a grip in the market. In addition, Yahoo! is allowed to enhance the search interface of its Bing based search results and innovation may happen in that too.

The people who deal with optimizing sites for search engines and using paid search campaigns for a certain company will perhaps find that this deal can make their lives easier. It will enable them as SEO to develop a method of optimization for a single search engine instead of two, and there will only be two pay per click campaigns that they need to keep track which is from Google and Yahoo!

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