Quite a few years ago, Yahoo! gave away their search power to Google, using them as a major part of their search results.  Then management decided to break from Google and do it on their own.

They had some success but could never touch the 60%+ market share that Google has enjoyed in the search engine race.

For the last year or so, Microsoft has made serious bids to buy the search feature, but Yahoo! wouldn’t sell.  Then Microsoft introduced Bing and the power dynamic changed.  Soon Bing was passing Yahoo! by.   The ultimate result…Yahoo! cuts their losses and doesn’t really get anything out of the agreement other than 88% of ad revenue from its ads placed on Bing.

Microsoft becomes the undisputed #2 in the search market with approximately 28% share (this of course will adjust depending on how the change is implemented and how much Yahoo! users like the idea or decide to jump ship for giant Google.

So for us in the web design and SEO market, its time to take a deep long look at our search engine strategies and make a bigger place for Bing…its not just another marketing play by Microsoft, this looks serious.

We will follow this story and will move our focus in discussions from Yahoo! to Bing and Google in the future.  Stay Tuned.  Meanwhile, check out latest articles on the merger.

• Yahoo Gives In to Microsoft, Gives Up on Search (Business Week)
• With Yahoo Search Gone, Content Becomes King (CNet)

What is so exciting about the new Bing.com you ask?

Well, for  you…probably not a whole lot.  Yes, it does use a slightly different indexing method and algorithm, but in reality, regular searches don’t seem to deliver anything very different than its “Live” predecessor.  For shopping, it does seem to be branching into reviews and pricing searches (like mysimon.com is).  For maps it actually has my business location (which Google hasn’t gotten to yet).  The Bird’s Eye shots are really clean and crisp…  But again, searches don’t seem very advanced and not any more advanced than Google from my initial views.  Time will tell.

For Microsoft, they are going to go on a brand blitz, with millions of dollars going into pushing Bing.com as the hot new competition to Google.com.

You see, Microsoft’s Live search was no unnoteworthy that less than 1% of people actually typed in Live.com to do searches on the site…the other 99% came from MSN.com.  Google has no master website feeding it searches…it uses a combination of toolbar searches and direct access searches, which keeps Google’s name in the forefront.  So it seems Microsoft thinks its way to beat Google is to get a new brand developed again and just heavily promote it.

But this strategy hasn’t done Vista any favors.  Even though it really is a decent and stable operating system, it still has a bad name…no matter how much Microsoft promotes it.  They have started promoting “Windows” now more than “Vista” because the next operating system will be called “Windows 7.”  And maybe that is the key for Microsoft…stop coming up with cute names and different brands…and just call their search Windows Search or Microsoft Search…and then just make a product that doesn’t change every 6 months.