Andrew Watson

Microsoft / Yahoo Search Alliance

Posted on 19. Feb, 2010 by Andrew Watson in Microsoft / Bing, Yahoo

Following the clearing of Microsoft’s plans to buy Yahoo’s internet search and search advertising businesses by both European and US regulators yesterday, a new search alliance website can be found explaining the tie up in more detail.

Essentially the tie up is based on more volume, and less effort – for a period of 10 years. Search ad inventory from Yahoo!, Microsoft, and their respective partners will be combined into a new unified search marketplace, giving advertisers of all sizes access to a combined audience of nearly 577 million searchers worldwide.

Yahoo and Microsoft will combine their existing marketplaces, in the US, Canada, UK and France. In other markets throughout Europe, Asia and Latin America, this transition will be seamless since Microsoft is already an existing Yahoo! partner, drawing from the Yahoo! marketplace. This is great news in terms of balancing the power of Google, and providing new opportunities to advertisers.

When the Yahoo! and Microsoft Search Alliance is implemented, both companies will continue to have differentiated consumer search experiences. However, Microsoft will manage the technology platforms that deliver the algorithmic (powered by Bing) and paid (powered by adCenter) search results.

Yahoo! and Microsoft will each provide customer support to different advertiser segments: Yahoo!’s sales team will exclusively support high volume advertisers, SEO and SEM agencies, and resellers and their clients. Microsoft will support self-service advertisers. In addition, Microsoft adCenter will be the platform for all search campaigns.