Microsoft and Yahoo both warned yesterday that the two companies have began testing their search partnership.
In July 2009 Microsoft struck one of the biggest deals in search when it was announced that Bing would power Yahoo search. The announcement caused much intrigue as it would appear that Microsoft would finally be in a position to compete with Google. After much legal protocol in February the deal finally got given the green light however since then all has gone quiet on the Microhoo front.
However almost a year to the day of the first announcement testing is finally underway which is said to be affecting a quarter of Yahoo’s current search traffic. Microsoft has warned webmasters to keep an eye on their search results in Yahoo in order to gauge whether any tweaks need to be made:
During this testing phase, it’s important to look at how your site is showing up in search results on Yahoo! and Bing today, so you can assess if there are any tweaks you need to make or feedback you need to share with the team to make sure your site is accurately represented in Bing’s results.
Microsoft have also made it clear that once the transition is complete you need to optimize for only Bing’s crawler and that webmasters should review their current crawl policies.
It would be wise for SEOs to do as Microsoft say and keep an eye on Yahoo search results. You don’t want to be in a position where you have to react to a drop in rankings when the transition is complete and so it is extremely worthwhile reading up on findings around Bing’s algorithm (if you have not done so already) and begin to push through and implement any necessary tweaks, or risk of being left behind!