SeoAlchemist

Google’s Marissa Mayer said the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal will not be good to industry competition. Specifically, she says that it will hamper innovation. But the Yahoo-Microsoft camp claimed that the recently announced search and advertising deal said other otherwise - that the deal will accelerate innovation, aside from generating efficiencies and create a stronger business than either company could create on their own.

But what will be the benefits of the Yahoo-Microsoft search and online advertising deal really to advertisers, web publishers, Yahoo and Microsoft, and most especially to us - consumers? Here’s a recap of the official documents released to the public outlining the benefits of the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal to consumers, advertisers, web publishers and to both companies.

For consumers, the search deal will:

• promote innovation that will generate better search experience for users, more innovation in search technologies, as well as more meaningful and relevant ads
• a more competitive alternative search that either company can offer if they were doing their search business on their own
• more transparency and choice when it comes to search engine practices including user privacy, security and other issues.

For advertisers, the search deal will”

• provide a single advertising platform that will give them more value for their ad spending; give users more relevant ads and drive more clicks and revenues
• provide a more competitive alternative to search advertising
• make search advertising more cost-effective in managing large-scale search advertising campaign

For web publishers, the search deal will:

• offer more competitive bids fo search syndication deals
• give more compelling advertising avenues to reach more users
• provide greate value and transparency

For Yahoo and Microsoft, the deal will:

• help them to more effectively monetize search investments; generate revenues for Yahoo from its search assets and Microsoft to wring greater efficiencies from its existing search business and generate increased revenue
• create more vibrant, competitive Internet ecosystem, again by providing more compelling and sustainable search alternative to Google.

Interestingly, the benefits outlined by the document was very clear in saying that the Yahoo-Microsoft search deal is aimed at offering  an “alternative” to users. Alternative having reference to Google’s dominance of the search and search advertising market.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

What the Yahoo-Microsoft Search Deal Means to Everyone

Sachio Search is a new (still experimental) FireFox plugin that lets you add as many search engines to your FireFox context menus:

• Install the addon;
• Select any word on a page;
• Right-click and choose any search engine:

The best thing about the addon is that it is very customizable, so you can really play to your heart’s content. Access the tool options via its toolbar:

• Customize the shortcut to access the tool;
• Set the search results to open in a new tab;
• Add, Remove and Order the search engines;
• Append a shortcut for any search engine:

More tools and tips on combining several search engines as well as making your FireFox search friendly:

• How To Compare Results on Different Search Engines;
• 3 Tools to Combine Bing and Twitter Search Results;
• How to Combine Google Search with Twitter Search;
• Unified Search: Featured FireFox Addon for Search;
• 20+ Must-Have FireFox Search Plugins for SEOs.

The tool was reviewed under SEJ policy.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

SEO FireFox Plugin: Add Many Search Engines to Your Context Menu

I’ll keep this short since you’re likely approaching Microsoft/Yahoo overload (if you haven’t heard about it yet you’re almost certainly here by mistake, but just in case learn more here, here, here, or pretty much anywhere on the Web), but the thing that struck me is that my knee jerk reaction to the deal as both a paid and natural search marketer was split:

• Happy About PPC
• Slightly Annoyed About SEO

There’s really very little debate about the positive impact of the deal on the lives of paid search practitioners:

• Less interaction with clumsy, frustrating interfaces (there is now at most one)
• Less of a problem for tool providers and in-house dev teams in programming against three APIs (this is a big one for WordStream, as we offer API access to AdWords and compatibility with adCenter and Yahoo!)
• Greater competition amongst paid search platforms will likely mean better ad targeting and more useful and sophisticated tools from both MicroHoo and Google

RKG has a nice summary that offers a similar sentiment. The tricky thing about the merger is the impact on SEO…

Why My Initial “SEO Reaction” Was Annoyance

It seems likely that Microsoft will gain some degree of search share. With additional resources and technology, a more than healthy budget, and an increased amount of data and market share, it seems unlikely to me that they won’t gobble up some degree of search share (as in: the combination of Yahoo!/Microsoft search percentage will be greater than it is currently).
The reason I find this troubling is that the Bing technology gaining ground may result in a significant enough jump in overall traffic that any thorough optimization process will require an SEO to take into account differences and quirks present in Bing’s algorithm. Things like:

• How the engines value different types of links - If Bing loves low quality, old links and Google hates them, that’s an issue.
• How the two engines filter content - What if overly aggressive anchor text is the way to rank in Bing, but a filter in Google?
• The impact of on-page factors – If SEO oriented title tags are a quality signal in Bing but links are dominant in the Google algo, you have an even more pronounced version of the old SEO vs. catchy title headline tight-rope to walk.
• Many, Many More – This is the point: search algorithms are COMPLEX, and that complexity increases by a multiple when you try to appease more than one algorithm.

For my money: PPC just got simpler, and SEO just got more complex. What do you think? Have you been balancing optimizing for the different types of relevance all along? Am I missing something? Is the paid search community (in being gleeful)? Comments welcome!

Tom Demers is the Director of Marketing at WordStream, a leading provider of keyword discovery and grouping software for PPC and SEO. To get in touch with Tom you can follow him on Twitter or read the WordStream Blog, where he is a frequent contributer.

Check out the SEO Tools guide at Search Engine Journal.

Why I’m Torn on the Bing Yahoo! Deal