Yahoo and Microsoft Finally Tie the Knot

After years of talking and protracted negotiations, Yahoo and Microsoft have finally agreed an Internet search deal. The full details of the deal are yet to be released but the basics are; Microsoft's search engine (Bing) will power Yahoo search and Yahoo will become the advertising sales team for Microsoft.

So how does this affect PPC? It is likely that Yahoo Search Marketing and MSN AdCenter will merge. The outcome will be a new paid search service run by Yahoo. These PPC ads will then show to both the Yahoo and MSN search traffic, increasing the exposure that the two could provide individually.

This means that if you currently run PPC on Yahoo and/or MSN you will need a new PPC strategy for Yahoo and MSN. If you currently only run PPC on Google then now is the ideal time to start on the new combined Yahoo/MSN. The increase in search volume means that there is an increased amount of potential traffic, conversions and ROI.

How will this affect Google AdWords? This deal’s sole purpose is almost definitely to try and compete with Google. So it is bad news for Google because its competition is now working together to try to dent its vast majority share of the UK and USA’s search traffic and PPC revenues. I personally believe that Yahoo and MSN are doing too little, too late and Google are so far ahead they cannot be caught or halted.

The truth is that this is one of the most exciting developments in Internet search and PPC in a long time and only time will tell if the deal will be a success for Yahoo and MSN or if Google will just continue to leave them behind.