Bing results on Yahoo – it’s already started!
With the recent confirmation that Yahoo will begin testing and displaying organic results powered by Bing in preparation for their upcoming merger, the search marketing industry has been ablaze trying to determine exactly how the change will affect traffic and conversions. On July 21, Search Engine Roundtable reported seeing, for the first time, exact 1:1 matches in organic results on Yahoo and Bing (see image below). And because Bing’s crawler interacts with and indexes websites differently than Yahoo’s does, it’s important to begin preparing for the switch before it happens – tentatively scheduled for September of this year.
Are you ready for this new alliance? Be sure to start with a data analysis. Check your most important, highest performing keywords in Yahoo and compare them in Bing. This will quickly tell you what your organic rankings will look like when they flip the switch. Losing rankings means losing traffic and conversions, so you’ll need to start optimizing for these changes immediately. On the Paid Search side, competition in going to increase, you won’t be able to buy Yahoo without buying Bing, so again, be sure to take a deep look at your PPC campaign while there’s still time.
We’ve created a quick checklist to help companies see if they are really ready or at risk. If you need any help, feel free to give us a call.
Download the Yahoo-Bing Alliance Transition Checklist.
