On February 18th 2010, the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance was made official, but what exactly does this mean to you? If your only use for Bing and/or Yahoo is to search the web, for better or worse, nothing is going to change. The sites will look the same and you will get the same results.
However, if you run a Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign or have been considering starting one in order to drive more traffic to your website this is important news for you. When changes come to pass your Microsoft or Yahoo PPC campaign will show ads on both Bing and Yahoo. Considering that Bing holds 11% of the search engine market and Yahoo holds 17% of the market your audience will have doubled in size. Google would tell you that with a Google AdWords account you can take advantage of Google’s impressive 65% market share. However, that 28% is still a sizable chunk of the market and represents around 16 million people every month.
Search Alliance
It is important to know that while the alliance has been made official the changes it will bring did not arrive until late 2010. It would be wise to consider allocating some money to advertise on the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance.
