After 18-months of speculation, false starts, and other drama (including an aborted bid by Microsoft to buy all of Yahoo! and an attempt by Google to engineer its own search partnership), Microsoft and Yahoo finally reached a 10-year search agreement.
The agreement is expected to take effect in early 2010 and will take 1 or 2 years to fully implement. Here are some of the particulars:
- The new Bing engine from Microsoft will power search across Yahoo’s properties.
- Together this will result in 28% of search traffic in the U.S. being run through the partnership (compare to estimates anywhere from 65 to 75+% share for Google).
- Yahoo will receive 88% of the search-generated ad revenue on its properties.
- Microsoft’s adCenter ad management tool will be the auction tool for self-service search ads.
- Yahoo’s sales force will sell premium search advertising arrangements to larger customers.
To the degree that this creates a viable #2 to Google’s dominance, it affects both search engine optimization (SEO) and pay-per-click advertising considerations. Some more reading on this topic:
Microsoft and Yahoo Reach Search Agreement – NYTimes.com
Advertisers Welcome Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal – Bits Blog – NYTimes.com
Yahoo, Microsoft reach search, ad deal | Beyond Binary | CNET News
