Article printed from SiteProNews: http://www.sitepronews.com
  HTML version available at: http://www.sitepronews.com/archives.html

Microsoft and Yahoo!, Search Engine Partners?
How Mergers and Acquisitions May Change the Search Engine Playing Field - and Where Google Comes In
By Scott Buresh (c) Medium Blue 2008

Until recently, there were five major players in the search
engine world: Google, MSN, AOL, Ask.com, and the Yahoo! search
engine. These top Internet search engines quickly could be
narrowed down to four, however; AOL uses the Google algorithm
and will yield nearly identical results. Further narrowing is
rapidly occurring - Ask.com seems to be stepping out of the
spotlight to focus on specific markets, and in early March 2008,
Microsoft began attempting to purchase the Yahoo! search engine.
If there are just two top search engines with which to be
concerned, what does this mean for your business and for SEO as
a whole?

What's Going On with the Yahoo! Search Engine?

As almost anybody with access to a news source knows by now,
Microsoft put in an unsolicited offer to purchase the Yahoo!
search engine in early March 2008. Yahoo! rejected this offer at
first, saying that it undervalued its company as one of the top
engines (and a provider of other services, including email and
chat as well). Microsoft did not increase the offer at this
point; it instead decided to enter a proxy battle.

A proxy battle would involve Microsoft putting up its own board
of directors to let shareholders decide if its purchase of the
Yahoo! search engine would be acceptable or not. In essence,
Microsoft has decided that it will attempt to convince
shareholders that their interests are better served by people
who will approve this acquisition between two of the top
Internet search engines. And Yahoo! shareholders have been
beaten down for some time, so it is widely expected that the
majority will in fact favor this acquisition.

Meanwhile, Yahoo!, on spurning this offer, began talking with
other companies in order to build strategic partnerships and
keep itself as one of the top engines, as it had been for so
long. It was rumored that MySpace's parent company, News
Corporation, was in talks to work with the Yahoo! search engine,
as was Google. However, these talks seem to have fizzled, and
Yahoo!'s board of directors has begun speaking directly with
Microsoft's board. Yahoo! bought a bit of time by delaying the
election of its board, but it is believed that this is all the
shareholders will stand for at this point.

So I'm assuming that if the acquisition goes down, the
Microsoft search engine and the Yahoo! search engine will likely
be using the same algorithm, even if they remain separate sites.
It just makes sense not to spend the money to have two separate
research departments, especially when the Yahoo! search engine
is widely regarded to be superior to Microsoft's.

Will Ask.com Continue to Be One of the Top Internet Search
Engines?

For a time, Ask.com seemed to be trying to go head to head with
Google and to position itself as one of the top Internet search
engines - period. You may remember the "algorithm" ads that it
ran for a time on television. However, recently Ask.com
announced that it will instead be tailoring itself to the niche
market share of which it already has control. In other words,
they're no longer trying to be all things to all people in the
way that other top search engines like, well, Yahoo! and Google
are.

What we know about Ask.com's demographic is that it is largely
female, although Ask.com refutes the notion that it is focusing
on "older women." According to an article in Forbes, an Ask.com
spokesperson said that:

...reports of the site becoming oriented towards older women
are false and were fueled by an erroneous Associated Press
article that has since been changed. Ask acknowledged that
married women do compose a lot of its core users and these
matronly queries are often dictionary, thesaurus, encyclopedia
type queries - as well as categories like health and
entertainment (1)...

Seeing as Ask.com also laid off 8% of its staff at the same
time that it refocused, it seems clear that the company is no
longer aiming to be considered one of the top Internet search
engines.

And this means that we are down to two search engine
technologies dominating the entire landscape: Google and a
MSN/Yahoo! search engine hybrid (Micro-hoo? Yah-soft?).

How Will This Affect Consumers?

If there truly are only two major top Internet search engines,
the industry will be like Coke vs. Pepsi. Sure there are other,
smaller players like RC Cola that some people will be brand
loyal about, but for the most part it's either Big Guy One or
Big Guy Two.

And this means that businesses that had good rankings and that
were getting good traffic from, say, Ask.com and MSN but not the
Yahoo! search engine, will be in a bind. With only two top
Internet search engines, there will be less real estate to
compete for and the same number of businesses vying for this
real estate.

How Will This Affect SEO Companies?

In one sense, having only two serious engines makes the job
easier for search engine optimization companies - there's just
less algorithms to absorb and master. However, it makes the
opportunity for volatility much more likely. Before, if the
Google or Yahoo! search engine changed its algorithm, you had
three or four other engines to fall back on while you worked to
update your practices. But with only two major players, a tweak
to either the Google or MSN/Yahoo! search engine algorithm could
have much further reaching implications to individual companies
in the search space.

Who Will Compete Next?

Google has been coasting for many years as being seen as the
underdog in the industry - the cool, hip engine to use that's
not owned by the big guys. However, search engine optimization
practitioners have started to see some cracks in that veneer.
The truth of the matter is that Microsoft is seen as a huge
corporate conglomerate, with Google starting to be seen
similarly. And now Google has to answer to shareholders, rather
than just going along trying "not to be evil." Google has its
own set of privacy issues and conflicts of interest, such as its
recent purchase of DoubleClick, which came along with a SEO
company. [See my recent article (http://www.mediumblue.com/
newsletters/performics.html) on this topic for more information.]

So when there are just two top Internet search engines, the
door is opened for competition. If another company can come
along technologically that is on par with the Google and Yahoo!
search engine algorithms and that does not have huge corporate
considerations, it could very well start gaining some market
share in this space. I'll let you know if I see any contenders.

Sources

1. http://www.forbes.com/technology/ebusiness/2008/03/05/
iac-ask-update-markets-equity-cx_md_0305markets33.html
================================================================
Scott Buresh is the founder of Medium Blue, a search engine
optimization company (http://www.mediumblue.com). His articles
have appeared in numerous publications, including MarketingProfs,
ZDNet, SiteProNews, WebProNews, DarwinMag, ISEDB.com, and
Search Engine Guide.
================================================================

Copyright © 2008 Jayde Online, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.

SiteProNews is a registered service mark of Jayde Online, Inc.