Latest on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance

Hopefully it will be a profitable partnership.

This will probably prove the worst strategic decision that Yahoo will ever make. There is a reason why Yahoo’s traffic is much higher than that of Bing: search results are much better. Bing is probably the slowest when it comes to indexing new pages, is very easy to manipulate, and has some very weird algorithms when it comes to returning search results.

According to ComScore, Yahoo finally had an increase of market share this month, why give it up to partner with the so called decision engine that people really hate. Microsoft was never good at search engines, and will never be, no matter what they call their search website: msn, live, bing, etc…

I’m very curious why Yahoo! was aggressive and took over all of Google’s search competition and then decided to throw it all away?

Purchasing all these other search engines did nothing more than leave Google with the majority of the search market and no one left to give them a run for their money. I was first disappointed when Yahoo! started delivering Google results back in 2000. I knew at that time Google was out to corner the ad market and by delivering Yahoo! results it made it that much easier for them to undermine Yahoo!. I felt there might be some hope when Yahoo! finally decided to go back and work with Inktomi in 2002 (which I believe scared Google). But it took two years before Yahoo! did anything about it and didn’t leave Google until 2004 (I think that’s the year).

I really thought when Yahoo! purchased Inktomi, AltaVista and AlltheWeb that Google would have a fight on their hand, but at the same time I was disappointed that we would have to say goodbye to these other engines which gave us (the human) a choice. AltaVista was a nice alternative to Google. Yahoo! was pretty good after acquiring all this great technology from Inktomi and AltaVista, but what did Yahoo! do with this? Well, we are here today only to see it all crumble apart again leaving only Google and Bing to feed us hungry humans. Every where you go it’s all the same results. Sure, you might prioritize Bing’s results differently, but if it can’t be found on Bing, it won’t be found on Yahoo! either. That’s what I hated about AltaVista after it was acquired by Yahoo!. That’s the part I hated the most. Nothing new anymore and it’s all so darn boring. Now all we have left is Google and Bing which I feel is a stab in the back to the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I like Yahoo! and Bing. I’m just disappointed there’s nothing left to give Google a fight now that Yahoo! threw in the towel too. Even if Bing and their relationship with Yahoo! were lucky enough to beat Google it still doesn’t change the fact that there’s nothing left that’s different to give us a choice. Don’t you think that’s a bummer?

I wish we could go back in time and do this all over again. Maybe we could have educated the site owner that placing Google Analytics and Google Adwords on our Web pages was going to hurt us all in the future. After all, look what’s happening today. We now all suffer because we have given Google all the information they needed to learn everything about us, our Website visitors and even our own personal Internet behavior. I think we all made a horrible mistake by giving Google all this knowledge and power. Heck, even the FBI uses Google to track people down. Do they call Yahoo! when they need information? Not likely… Google has something like 85% of the world exposure! They even fight countries like China and France! Google is even on your phone! They know where you are, where you’re going and what you had for dinner. Now that Yahoo! has pretty much given up on this fight, I’m scared to see what tomorrow brings.

I sure wish Yahoo! and Bing luck on this one because they’re going to need it. I sure wish we could bring back all those smaller search engines though.

In my opinion, it is a good move… we are are tired of Google monopoly. We hope this partnership will over throw the giant and put reasonable price on ads.

I am excited about this alliance and how it may impact the online search engine world. I’m not a fan of the Bing platform but I am optimistic about the changes that will be taking place in the future. Google has such a great searching experience and I am excited to see how the added competition will change all search engine’s user’s experiences. I have always loved Yahoo search too and so I am a little disappointed that the alliance will be with Bing but I know that this merging will bring about an even better search engine for users due to all the smart minds behind this undertaking. I look forward to the great Search Engine Saga that is about to unfold.

I understand there has been a lot of testing recently. However, in the UK,
when carrying out a web search, the results shown for a search do not allow the option to explore concepts. Instead, it just indicates ‘no available suggestions’ in drop down box. I know this is incorrect because I have the results of the same search carried out previously which does show available options for exploring concepts.

What about the Yahoo! Directory?

Will this still be maintained by Yahoo or will it go the way of search? Bing does not offer this currently, will it stay?

@Tech – I agree with you 100%.

As many other of SEOs do, I use the SEOBook toolbar, and the Yahoo! link checking tool has stopped working. Are there any plans to get this working again through the Bing search results?

I think if Bing use Yahoo’s algorithm for Search, The customer will increase.

I think this is good as far as the pay per click stands. Bing has match types for keywords and will show you the exact keyword that you got a sale from content match. Which yahoo doesnt have that technology. Would have to agree msns search engine sucks. Yahoo needs to keep there results.

I wondered what had happened. Out little website dropped from number 2 on page one to over half way down page four. A trial website we built that was never officially released now ranks higher than our current site.

We happen to be in a category where the first several pages (and I mean several) of organic results on google and now Yahoo are dominated by a single provider and all of it’s affiliates.

Yahoo was worlds ahead of google before because it actually showed consumers relevant choices.

From a real world perspective this was not a good change (At least from our perspective). Now all the major search engines are correlated.

Microsoft Bing is aggressively chasing after Google. Exciting times ahead for the technology industry. Couldn’t believe how much the search engine business represented as a single percentage market share, no wonder they are all fighting so hard!

Bing Webmaster Tools are absolutely hopeless as of now! Some examples:

- Bing hasn’t crawled my website for over a week since I resubmitted my sitemap. I update my blog frequently and Google usually crawls my site within minutes of an update.

- Bing doesn’t even accept the sitemap of my other website which is hosted on Blogger. I have added the sitemap but Bing either “times out” looking for it or says there are no sitemaps added at all!

- Crawl rate of Bing is pathetic! It is just crawling a few pages everyday, much less than Google and Yahoo.

All in all, Yahoo merging into Bing is a big disappointment for me, and for the world at large, I’m sure!

Regards

Vijay